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From International Socialism (1st series), No.28, Spring 1967, p.33.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Autobiography of Joseph Arch
MacGibbon & Kee, 30s
An abridged version of the autobiography of Arch, who organised the first agricultural workers’ trade union in this country. He was a real Victorian worthy – proud of his skill as a worker, imbued with the notion of self-help, firm supporter of Gladstone and the Liberal Party, convinced of the vote as a panacea for social evils.
The union began in 1872, with a strike of some farm labourers in Warwickshire, and spread astonishingly quickly, but the farmers hit back hard with lock-outs and victimisation. There are references in the autobiography to disputes within the union, but it is never made clear whether these were over policy or personalities. Whether the omissions are in the original text or only in this version is not revealed.
With all its limitations, this is an interesting account of a little-known sector of working class struggle in the nineteenth century and throws some light on the type of men who became trade-union leaders.
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Last updated on 3.1.2008