LOOKING FOR THE MOON?
Wiltshire Industrial History: Working class episodes, edited by Rosie MacGregor for White Horse (Wiltshire) Trades Council (WaterMarx on behalf of WHTC, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9570726-0-2): reviewed by Douglas Stuckey
This collection of essays concentrates heavily on the decades immediately following the Second World War. People then were generally concerned personally about politics and many more of the electorate used their vote at both national and local opportunities than now. All sorts of passionate debates took place everywhere, mock parliaments were a commonplace feature of evening entertainment.
There was a plethora of competing groups vying for attention. Even in conservative Wessex at one time and another the Communist Party had councillors in Clevedon, Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge and in Cirencester Wogan Phillips, 2 nd Baron Milford was a member of both the Communist Party and the House of Lords. (The vicious tyranny of Stalin had been obscured by the unbelievably valiant defence of Stalingrad and Leningrad by Russian soldiers.) Membership of trades unions was high and there were active trades union councils in Melksham, Warminster, Chippenham, Salisbury, Swindon, Devizes and Trowbridge.
However, the hopes and efforts of many idealistic men and women were slowly betrayed. This little book does not state this in so many words but its detailed record of events admits of no other interpretation. Despite some vital achievements of the Labour government such as the National Health Service it was at the mercy of the then right-wing bosses of the trades unions whose undemocratic card votes dominated conference decisions; the last thing they wanted was local independence which might take away not only their power but their reason for existence.
Dave Chapple writing extensively about Trowbridge Communist councillors, Idris and Phyllis Rose, points us to their hard work in local resistance to the abolition of Borough and Urban District Councils, a policy which the parliamentary Labour Party supported in and out of opposition. However, Idris thought that the Soviet Union was a decent socialist state and when council house rents were being raised here, in the huge drab flats on the outskirts of Soviet cities they had not, so the Russian system must be superior…
One of the most intuitive and balanced contributions is by Derique Montaut, former Labour Group Leader in Swindon. He writes vividly of the Pressed
Book Review 16
Wiltshire Industrial History: Working class episodes, edited by Rosie MacGregor for White Horse (Wiltshire) Trades Council (WaterMarx on behalf of WHTC, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9570726-0-2): reviewed by Douglas Stuckey
This collection of essays concentrates heavily on the decades immediately following the Second World War. People then were generally concerned personally about politics and many more of the electorate used their vote at both national and local opportunities than now. All sorts of passionate debates took place everywhere, mock parliaments were a commonplace feature of evening entertainment.
Steel factory there when working conditions were appalling, many unskilled workers suffering from repeated lead poisoning but able to earn enough money on piece-work to labour for only 30 hours a week. Strikes happened nearly every day and union discipline was enforced fiercely: when Montaut was a shop steward and his members had voted against joining a national strike “a big Scottish bloke” came up to him and threatened to break his legs.
It would be convenient to be able to say that we could trace a continuous history of progressive organisation and action across the centuries. Chartist leaders in the 19 th century did come down and speak but theirs was primarily an urban movement and did not move hearts in rural Wessex. ln fact, although Cobbett described the dire conditions for working class folk in the area in his time, which fuelled the Swing ‘Rebellion’ and the disruption and ‘outrages’ by the disaffected shearmen and others in the woollen industry, the protest was, in a sense, totally reactionary. They wished to destroy the new-fangled threshing machines on the land and burn the gig mills which had mechanised the shearmen’s handcraft. They also preferred to stick to wage negotiations between master and man face-to-face rather than agree as a concerted body.
It is wise, perhaps, not to treat the word ‘reactionary’ as always pejorative – the defence of the traditional and local can often be dismissed by its use. In Wessex those who value its history and identity will think that often that defence is worth strenuous effort.
This is a review of a booklet which contains much of interest. What might have been hoped for is some vision for the future drawing from the sometimes heroic, sometimes depressing radical past.©