Tolpuddle - the original martyr's Chapel saved | IBEX - The Churches working with the Economy - Central South Coast Contact Tolpuddle – the original martyr’s Chapel saved I remember from my schooldays in the 1960’s learning about the Tolpuddle martyrs. Little did I realise at the time their significance, both to the Church and to the Trade Unions. In recent years I have become more involved in the Tolpuddle festival and other things around the story, and have learnt that the current Methodist Chapel in the Village is not the one that was used by the martyrs, but that this original building was owned by a local farmer, had been used as a store and was falling in to disrepair. This was a building significant architecturally, a particularly fine example of an early 19th century Methodist village Chapel, let alone its enormous historical significance as the spiritual home of those six men, who were motivated in their quest for justice by their faith. I received the news a few days ago that a Trust specially formed for the task has been successful in purchasing the building, and that work has already started through English Heritage to secure the building and bring the deterioration to a halt.

Herewith the text of the Press Release: Tolpuddle’s Historic Former Methodist Chapel Acquired A Grade II* listed former Methodist Chapel built in 1818 in Tolpuddle, Dorset has been purchased by a newly formed Building Preservation Trust helped by funds and expert advice from English Heritage. Emergency repairs to stabilise the cob walls and to make the building wind and water tight started today (Tuesday 17th February 2015), funded by a £9500 grant from English Heritage and managed by the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust (TOCT). It is hoped that the major conservation works will be completed by 2018 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the opening of the building. Andrew McCarthy, Chairman of The Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust (TOCT), said: “We are committed to sympathetically restoring this historically important former chapel which was once used for worship by at least four of the six Tolpuddle Martyrs and three of them may well have preached from its pulpit” Andrew continued: “We are grateful to English Heritage and other partners who are helping to save this unique building for future generations to visit and enjoy.

We look forward to consulting local people about possible future uses for the building once renovation work is complete.” Sarah Ball, Heritage at Risk Architect for English Heritage in the South West said: “We are very pleased that the Tolpuddle Old Chapel Trust has now secured ownership of this fascinating former chapel. The building is of real and very great historical interest. Our grant will enable much needed emergency work to be carried out to ensure its structural stability. We are looking forward to working with the Trust as they explore sympathetic and sustainable new uses and the repair of the building.” Gavin Richards of AHF said “The Architectural Heritage Fund exists to support the re-use of redundant historic buildings around the UK. We are delighted to support a new local Trust in its efforts to bring this modest yet internationally important building back into sustainable use and, ultimately, see it removed from the Heritage at Risk Register.” The development of the former Chapel will also help to enhance the visitor and tourist experience as part of the ‘rural life’ heritage corridor linking Dorchester with Hardy’s Birthplace, Athelhampton House and Tolpuddle. The former Chapel is featured on the new Audiovisual Trail being developed by the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum .

The continued existence of this chapel can be confirmed through to 1843, and it may well have remained in use until a new village Methodist chapel was built in 1862-63. For the next 150 years it has been used for agricultural purposes. Contact David Wrighton, Team Leader, E-mail: tl@ibexsouthcoast.org.uk The Tolpuddle Martyrs | History Today The Tolpuddle Martyrs Social In 1833 a group of farm labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, having seen their already low wages of 9s.a week cut to 7s.and then threatened with a further reduction, decided to form a 'Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers'. Led by George Loveless, a Methodist lay preacher, a preliminary meeting was arranged, followed on December 9th by an invitation ceremony on the pattern of other trade societies at which the founder members swore to abide by the Society's rules. When, however, news of these events reached the local magistracy, they were greatly alarmed.

Against the background of an almost unprecedented wave of unrest and arson in the rural southern counties which was only just dying away, and stories of mounting strikes and disorder in urban areas, they obtained the approval of the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, to arrest the leaders for taking 'Unlawful Oaths' under a little-used statute of 1797. On February 22nd 1834, Loveless and five other men were arrested and charged. A month later, at the assizes in Dorchester, they were found guilty and given the maximum sentence of seven years transportation. The harsh sentence provoked outrage and protest meetings were held up and down the country. In London an estimated 25,000 workmen, organised by a 'Dorchester Committee', marched through the streets to present a petition to Lord Melbourne in one of the largest peaceful demonstrations seen in the capital during the nineteenth century. Want the full article and website archive access? Already a member? Log in now Anti Capitalist Meetup: The Tolpuddle Martyrs: Why them, why now? - Shadowproof Anti Capitalist Meetup: The Tolpuddle Martyrs: Why them, why now?

northsylvania 2013-07-14 0 0 The Tolpuddle Martyrs, condemned and harshly punished by the biased justice system of 19th century England, were very lucky. They not only lived through their ordeal, but also became enduring symbols of resistance whose story is celebrated even now. Next weekend, union members and their families from all over the UK will gather at the little museum on the outskirts of Tolpuddle on July 19th – 21st for a festival of music picnics, and rallies. The magnificent union banners often seen on the streets of London during the recent protests will be paraded in a far different setting: the rolling agricultural land of Dorset. Though the Martyrs didn’t pay with their lives, their fate was dire enough, and the circumstances that caused them to be sent, first to the prison hulks of the Southwest coast and then across the world, were universal enough that they became a rallying point for resistance throughout the country.

What makes their story relevant, not only to British union history, but to the present circumstances that many working people find themselves in worldwide, is that their story, like ours, arose from a time of social and technological change, dislocation, changing class allegiances, long term conflict, and scarcity. English history has not been part of the American educational canon since before WWII, when my mother struggled with the intricacies of the Corn Laws in high school; so follow me below the fold to find out a little of what is not shown in the costume dramas that pass for our understanding of 19th century England. **************************************************************************** They hang the man, and flog the woman, That steals the goose from off the common; But let the greater villain loose, That steals the common from the goose. (traditional) Prior to the early 1600s, large amounts of land in the UK was common land. Royalty and some of the aristocracy had estates that were off limits to the general public, but there was enough land that workers who lived in the countryside and paid tithes in produce to the local landowner could still raise livestock, hunt, and forage on common ground sufficient to support a family.

The first Enclosure Acts took the traditional right of the commons away from the Irish, and gave the land to the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, but commoners on the main island also underwent a series of dispossessions after 1750. Some people resisted, particularly in the South and Southwest during the 1640s, where raiders vandalised offenders under the leadership of “ Lady Skimmington ”, skimmington being a symbol of protest against societal transgressions to the established order and common law. This was a period when the laws of Parliament were superseding customary rights, and working class countrymen continued to contest this change for the next two centuries. The Captain Swing riots in 1830 were a symptom of the general unrest that had long been extant in farming communities, despite their association with breaking farm machinery, and with the earlier Luddite rebellion. Machines and Men: The English industrial revolution, unlike our current technological great leap forward, did not take place in a generation, but slowly and sporadically. It came to the textile industry and the coal mines far earlier than it did to the fields, so its effect on the general population increased slowly over time.

It did affect the cottage industry of cloth manufacture fairly rapidly, and took away an important source of income from the villagers in the countryside. As industrialisation spread, more and more industries became mechanised. However, as goods became cheaper and more readily available to the general populace, other people lost sources of income they had formerly earned from their trades. Textile workers organized first and, after breaking up machinery during the 1811- 1817 Luddite Rebellion , were ruthlessly suppressed. At one point there were more British soldiers involved with combating the revolt than were fighting the French army. Machine breaking was made a capital crime, and show trials were held. Perpetrators, sympathizers, and even innocent bystanders were punished, either by execution or transport to penal colonies abroad. Life in the countryside was particularly affected in the 19th century: the farms were no longer open field, supporting their dependent villages, and agricultural labour became casual and wage driven, with no guarantee of work. Pay declined, as less people were needed. While some families moved to industrial centres, others in more remote areas such as rural Dorset, found themselves stranded with no means of transport, trying to support their families on less and less.

The Swing rioters, like the Luddites before them, were protesting the loss of their livelihood, and were punished in a similar manner. Class alliances and the Gentleman Farmer: As conspicuous consumption became more popular, landowning farmers began to style themselves as part of the growing middle class. This required a greater percentage of the total income earned, and led to a growing distance between the farmer and farm worker: The land produces, on an average, what it always produced; but, there is a new distribution of the produce. This ‘Squire’ Charington’s father used, I dare say, to sit at the head of the oak-table along with his men, say grace to them, and cut up the meat and the pudding. He might take a cup of strong beer to himself, when they had none; but, that was pretty nearly all the difference in their manner of living. So that all lived well. But the ‘Squire had many wine-decanters and wine-glasses and ‘a dinner-set’ and a ‘breakfast-set’ and ‘desert-knives’; and these evidently imply carryings on and a consumption that must of necessity have greatly robbed the long oak table if it had remained fully tenanted.

That long table could not share in the work of the decanters and the dinner set. Therefore, it became almost untenanted; the labourers retreated to hovels, called cottages; and instead of board and lodging, they got money; so little of it as to enable the employer to drink wine; but the, that he might not reduce them to quiet starvation they were enabled to come to him, in the king’s name and demand food as paupers. Journalist and MP Thomas Cobbett 1825 Agricultural workers, unable to count on either outside income from cottage industry or extra resources formerly available to them from the commons, were reduced to living in increasingly impoverished circumstances. When they objected, as did the Tolpuddle Martyrs, landowners asked higher authority to punish them as they would rebels or thieves: with imprisonment and transportation. Other Influences: Alliances fighting the French during the Napoleonic Wars shifted over time, but Britain was involved in low intensity fighting for the entire period between 1803- 1815, both with their own military forces, and through financially supporting other countries to fight proxy wars, sometimes under British command.

When the wars ended, and the soldiers came home, excess labour depressed already low wages. The mercantilist Corn Laws , which were in force between 1815 and 1846 protected landowning farmers from cheaper foreign grain imports by imposing massive import duties. The landowners profited, however, the workers who were now forced to buy grain, when they had formerly grown it for themselves, suffered. In the early 1830s, there were poor harvests, so for all intents and purposes there was little grain to buy, especially on a workman’s wages, either in the industrial North or in Dorset. Pushback: As London and the north became more industrialised, and those disenfranchised agricultural workers who could travel moved to these areas to find work, collective dissatisfaction of the workers increased. Surplus workers, low wages, rising living expenses, and the obvious differences in living standards between industrialists and landowners on one hand, and the rest of the population on the other, made social unrest inevitable.

Working people realised they were replaceable cogs in the industrial and agricultural machinery of production, and began to realise that specific actions such as the Luddite and Swing rebellions needed to evolve into a more general movement toward unionism. Because the textile mills had been the earliest adopters of industrial technology, workers there were the first to organise, though mechanics, blacksmiths, and other trades associated with the mills were encouraged to join. Though the National Association for the Protection of Labour , foundered through internal politics, the later and more successful Grand National Consolidated Trades Union shortly succeeded it. This union was founded in London by Robert Owen , an important contributor to Socialist thought in England, and eventually an MP. in 1834. It was under the influence of organisers from this union, who were trying to expand participation throughout the trades, that six desperate agricultural workers from Tolpuddle attempted to form a “friendly society” for the purpose of bettering the lot of themselves and their starving families.

The Martyrs and their society: George Loveless was a Methodist minister, or dissenter, which already branded him as suspiciously rebellious with local Anglican landowners and clergy, though he and his brother James had actually served as guards over local property during the Swing Rebellion. Along with Thomas Standfield and his son John, James Hammett and James Brine, they met frequently to discuss how they might work together to bring their wages in line with the already low 10 shilling weekly wages of workers in surrounding farms. Their income had gone from 9 shillings to 8 when living expenses amounted to around 14 shillings a week. Unless a family had multiple incomes, they would starve. The men first applied to the local magistrate in 1831, who ruled that the landowners, not workers, were entitled to set wages. Loveless applied for advice from Grand National Trades Union, and the men then decided to form one of their own by swearing an oath of solidarity. While placards advising against unions were later posted around the village, it was the oath that sealed their fate.

When an agent of the local squire infiltrated the society and was administered the oath, he testified that he had done so before a county judge known to be hostile to unions, and a biased jury of landowners. In 1834, the men were convicted of breaking parts of two laws: one against sedition, the other against “administering an unlawful oath”, a subsection of an obscure 18th century law that had been put on the books to prevent mutiny on Navy ships. The judge delivered a hard sentence: seven years transportation to Australia saying, The object of all legal punishment is not altogether with the view of operating on the offenders themselves, it is also for the sake of offering an example and a warning. The prison continent: Rebellion and sedition along with destruction of property, or even stealing a loaf of bread, were all punished harshly, by imprisonment, or preferably getting rid of the offenders entirely either by execution or transportation. So many desperate people broke the law during the 18th and 19th centuries that English prisons simply weren’t big enough to hold them.

Before the American Revolution, many prisoners had been sent there, but after the War of Independence, and discovery of Australia, new penal colonies were formed to supply the British Navy with timber, food, and sailcloth. Australia was a harsh and unforgiving environment, and those who did not perish in the overcrowded prison ships anchored off the English coast, or while they were manacled during the nine-month voyage via Brazil and South Africa, often did when they were immediately set to work on their arrival. They often worked barefoot, were given neither bedding nor sufficient clothing, and slept on the bare ground at night. This was the fate of James Lovelace, the Standfields, Brine, and Hammet. George Lovelace was singled out and sent to Van Diemen’s Land, a prison colony so brutal it was later rebranded as Tasmania to avoid the association with barbarism. Of his conditions Lovelace said, To enumerate the various miseries and evils which prisoners are subjected to from the time of landing in the colony until their death, would be utterly impossible; suffice it to say it is dreadful in the extreme, so much so that a person who has never been there can have no idea of it.

This was the punishment that made them martyrs, symbols of all that was unjust about the emerging system of English mercantile capitalism and world hegemony. The biased trial over a trumped up infraction, and cruel punishment, made them a focal point for demonstrations that showed the strength of the union movement, and eventually saw them pardoned and returned to England. Pushback II: Six agricultural workers from rural Dorset: they could have been neglected and forgotten, but they represented injustices that touched every family in working class Britain. Many were forced to work for less than a living wage in progressively more dehumanising environments: in the fields, in the mills, and in the mines. As news of their harsh sentence travelled, a sense of outrage built. Owen’s Grand National Trades Union supported their cause, as did a number of Members of Parliament including Thomas Wakely and Thomas Cobbett. The London Central Dorchester committee was formed to agitate for their pardon, and gathered a petition with 800,000 signatures. A march to present it to the Home Secretary was organized and attracted 100,000 people. Thousands of others cheered from the rooftops along the demonstration route.

The government so feared the potential for disturbance that Lifeguards, the Household Cavalry, detachments of Lancers, two troops of Dragoons, eight battalions of infantry and 29 pieces of ordnance or cannon were mustered. More than 5,000 special constables were sworn in. The city looked like an armed camp. Nonetheless the unions marched. The Home Secretary refused to accept the petition personally, and the government tried to ignore the increasing protests and petitions from all over the country. However, within a year the Home Secretary had signed a conditional release, but the Tolpuddle men held out for a full and free pardon, which they received in March of 1836. A year later, they returned home. Afterward: The London Central Dorchester Committee raised funds for the Martyrs and their families to have farms of their own in Essex, though James Hammett returned to Tolpuddle, where he worked in obscurity as a construction worker. The others, including George Loveless moved to Essex and continued to campaign for political reforms such as enfranchising all men, voting by secret ballot, and equal electoral districts.

Property owners in Essex were no more comfortable with the threat of change than those of Dorset had been. An editorial in the Essex Standard said: George Loveless, instead of quietly fulfilling the duties of his station . . . is still dabbling in the dirty waters of radicalism and publishing pamphlets to keep up the old game. While the Martyrs had remained resolute throughout their ordeal, the threat of being arrested and transported yet again undoubtedly influenced their decision to depart for London, Ontario, where they became prosperous farmers. James and John Loveless both became Methodist ministers there. John Standfield founded a choir, ran a hotel, and eventually became mayor of East London. James Brine married Thomas Standfield’s daughter and died at 90 in 1902. A monument, cooperative housing, and park were dedicated to their memory in Ontario in 1969. English Exceptionalism then/ American Exceptionalism now: I often read on contemporary political forums, that the rollback of hard-won rights in the last thirty years is unprecedented.

While the process is appalling, I think that there is a lot to be learned from the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ place in a socio-political environment that had much in common with present day America. England then, like America now, wanted total control, both internally and externally. The English ruthlessly colonized much of the world, extracting resources for their own benefit. They were as paranoid about the French as our government is about the Middle East, and likewise built up very expensive military and diplomatic capabilities worldwide to control them, as well as their own expanding empire. Internally, the rise of mercantilism and capitalism benefitted the few at the expense of the many. Their middle class, like ours, was increasingly seduced by cheap luxuries into ignoring the plight of those who produced them. The poor were dehumanised, and often imprisoned or sent abroad to work for someone else’s benefit, echoing our own prison-industrial complex. More importantly, the rise of England as a world power was paralleled by successive curtailment of rights for the individual. In extreme cases, such as the Highland Clearances in Scotland, people were thrown off the land entirely.

Further south life was made so miserable that the poor left the land if they could and worked for pauper’s wages in the mills. If they couldn’t leave, they lived on even less. Anyone who has witnessed the destruction of huge swathes of America’s industrial cities, and the hopelessness and poverty that is left behind can relate. The current excuse of technical progress being the root cause of our unique circumstances was one that was promoted in 19th century England as well. Industrialisation did improve efficiency, increasingly better transportation and improved communication. Cheap luxury items and pride in technical prowess provided distraction. Despite the extreme environmental degradation experienced during those times, popular sentiment would not have allowed a turn away from industrialisation any more than asking people to give up their computers and mobile phones would garner any sympathy from the majority now. Luddites and Captain Swing rioters did not succeed for a reason. However opinions as to how technology is used, and how to ensure individual rights can change over time. Capitalism in all its raw glory is ruthless. Most of us on this forum get that, but we have yet to overcome the inertia of the distracted majority.

The trade unionists and socialists like Robert Owen had a steep uphill climb to convince England that their system was unbalanced and unfair. In the end it was the plight of six ordinary farm workers from an obscure village that fired the imagination of the majority and convinced them that political and social change through solidarity was possible. The union made their plight known, and supported their families in their absence. Sympathetic representatives in Parliament made sure the Home Office paid attention. This solidarity lasted over the long haul, and cut across trade and class lines. Our goal should be to build similar alliances across the divides that seem to separate us from those who, like us, are uneasy with the loss of individual rights, the confiscation of property on technicalities, the imprisonment of a large percentage of our population, and the turn toward authoritarianism and universal control which threaten us now.

Additional Sources Referenced: The Peel Web (Thomas cobett and rural economy) (martyrs page) multiple pages from the Martyr’s Museum in Tolpuddle Images of Dorset - Photographs of Tolpuddle and Puddletown Stock Sales Tolpuddle and Puddletown In the rural heart of Dorset, on the small River Piddle, are the two villages of Tolpuddle and Puddletown. Tolpuddle is the lesser of the two villages, being little more than a small collection of houses, however its name is etched in English history as a result of events that took place there in the early 19th century. The gallery shows the two villages as they appeared on a day early in November 2001, the bright clear sky leaving deep shadows. The pictures follow the route of a short walk starting at the cottage in Tolpuddle where the martyrs were said to have met, then following the Piddle upstream to the nearby Puddletown.

To view any image full size - simply click on the thumbnail At the turn of the 19th century high corn prices and low labourers' wages led to a several years of unrest, with incidents of rural sabotage and numerous uprisings. Trades Unions had been made legal in 1824 but when, in 1834, labourers from Tolpuddle met to form a 'Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers' (albeit in secret) the general climate of unease throughout the country had reached such depths that the six ringleaders were arrested and sentenced to seven years' transportation. The harshness of the sentences shocked many. The men were soon known as the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs'. Two years later the then Home Secretary  Lord John Russell  granted pardons to all, but it took a further three years until all of the six had been brought back from New South Wales and Tasmania.

Tolpuddle – a photographic essay | Dorset Life - The Dorset Magazine Advertising rates Other publications Dorset Business Directory Tolpuddle – a photographic essay Ken Ayres points his camera at the village where six working men were ostensibly prosecuted for swearing a false oath, but actually persecuted for forming an association to fight wage cuts Published in October ’11 Tolpuddle may be known the world over as the home of trade unionism, but it was not the birthplace of the union movement (membership of trades unions had in fact been made legal the year before the Tolpuddle Martyrs were prosecuted), so much as the place where such a travesty of justice occurred that roused the fury of hundreds of thousands across England. It was here that a local squire, James Frampton, sought counsel from the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, on how he could quash an attempt on the part of some local agricultural labourers to fight wage cuts. Melbourne responded by suggesting he make use of the little-known 1797 Act Against Unlawful Oaths, which had been enacted following a naval mutiny at Spithead.

Frampton, along with eight other local magistrates, signed notices warning that anyone swearing an unlawful oath could be transported for seven years. Two days after the notices were posted, six men were arrested. In March 1834 the men were tried in Dorchester according to charges established by the grand jury (which included Frampton, two of his relatives, Melbourne’s brother-in-law and some of the magistrate co-signatories of the notices). The petty jury of twelve local farmers – who had no desire to pay increased wages – followed the direction from Judge John Williams that ‘If you do not find them guilty [of an offence he compared to sedition and treason] you will forfeit the goodwill and confidence of the Grand Jury.’ The six men were duly convicted and sentenced on 18 March 1834 for transportation to Australasia. In April 1834, 800,000 people signed a petition calling for the men to be reprieved; over 100,000 marched from Copenhagen Fields in London to Westminster to demand their pardon. Two years later, after an election, a new Home Secretary twice initially offered a conditional pardon before offering an unconditional pardon.

The men were allowed to return home, although only one, James Hammett, remained in Tolpuddle. The other five moved to Essex and then Canada. The church of St John The Evangelist in part dates back to the 12th century, but is believed to have been built on the site of an even earlier church. In the 1767 account of a visit to Tolpuddle by Bishop Secker (the then Archbishop of Canterbury), the village is described as ‘a large parish with no papists, a church three isles deep, with a tower and four bells and regular divine Sunday service.’ The grave of James Hammett, the only one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs to have stayed in Tolpuddle and the only one not to have been present at the meeting where the ill-fated oaths were sworn Thompson Dagnall’s powerful sculpture of George Loveless, from his recuperation time in Dorchester prison, while he was deemed too ill to be transported, after his five co-convicted martyrs had been placed on hulks ahead of being transported.

The sculpture’s seat backs bear a quote from Loveless: ‘We will, we will, we will be free.’ This old water mill was converted to a house after the mill was decommissioned. There are still remains of a milling wheel inside. The beautifully tended garden (right) of the Manor House, Tolpuddle, a 1696 Grade II* listed building which was widely altered in the 18th century Looking west along Main Road, the village’s primary thoroughfare, showing a mixture of cob and thatch, Victorian brick-built cottages and sympathetically designed new-build housing This is not the original Methodist chapel where George Loveless preached as a minister, but built as a memorial to the Martyrs in 1862. Fifty years later a memorial gate was unveiled, bearing a quote from George Loveless’s defence: ‘We have injured no man’s reputation, character, person or property. We were uniting together to preserve ourselves, our wives and our children from utter degradation and starvation.’ The 19th-century schoolhouse is now the Tolpuddle village hall, wherein a whole range of local groups and societies meet.

The annual Martyr’s Rally helps to finance the village hall’s operation thanks to impressive catering takings during the festival. Wonderfully colourful floral displays outside Bluebell Cottage – a recently built house which sits happily within the Tolpuddle vernacular style in terms both of its design and building materials Comrades (1986) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.

Director: a list of 36 titles created 19 Oct 2010 a list of 100 titles created 08 Nov 2011 a list of 35 titles created 04 Jul 2012 a list of 260 titles created 28 Mar 2013 a list of 40 titles created 02 Oct 2015 Search for " Comrades " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 1 win & 1 nomination. See more awards » Photos Prior to his appointment to United States Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall worked as a lawyer for the NAACP. This one man play tells the story of his role in the civil rights movement and the people that influenced him. Director: Michael Stevens Michael Pollan, a professor of journalism and a student of food, presents the history of four plants, each of which found a way to make itself essential to humans, thus ensuring widespread ...

See full summary » Directors: Michael Schwarz, Edward Gray Stars: Frances McDormand, Michael Pollan A surrealistic revision of Alice in Wonderland. Director: Jan Svankmajer A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to the United States. Director: Elia Kazan A grisly murder occurs in Maruyama-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo - a love hotel district - a woman was found dead in a derelict apartment. Kazuko (Miki Mizuno) is a police officer called to ... See full summary » Director: Sion Sono When a toy manufacturer feels ignored and unappreciated by by his wife and children, he begins to rekindle a past love when a former employee comes back into his life. Director: Douglas Sirk Based on the Aramoana Massacre that occurred on 13 November and 14 November 1990. Resident David Gray, an unemployed gun collector, went on a rampage in which 13 people were shot dead, before Gray himself was shot by police.

Director: Robert Sarkies A documentary on Phil Rosenthal's experiences during the making of "Voroniny," the Russian-language version of "Everybody Loves Raymond". Director: Philip Rosenthal Chronological exploits of Iwao Enokizu, a murderous thief on the lam. Director: Shôhei Imamura The second part (My ain folk) of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the ... See full summary » Director: Bill Douglas Edit Storyline The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages. Written by Steve Crook <steve@brainstorm.co.uk> 23 August 1987 (UK) See more » Also Known As: Comrades - uomini liberi See more » Filming Locations: Trevor Howard was offered the role of Mr.

Pitt ( Michael Hordern ) See more » Frequently Asked Questions (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews Bill Douglas  the director  might have been born to tell this story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs; his own Scottish childhood had been something of a martyrdom to working class deprivation and poverty. I vaguely knew about these Tolpuddle Martyrs from school history: how 6 humble farm labourers in rural Dorset of the 1830′s had dared to form a union and ask for higher wages , and as a sorry consequence got deported to Australia. This "poor mans epic" was a flop in the cinema and got dropped after a couple of weeks, never, or hardly ever to be seen again. I can sort of see why it didn't have general commercial appeal. At times Douglas's way of telling the story gets in the way, slows down, or even just undercooks, dedramatises  deliberately?  the films propulsion, pace, purpose.

I suppose i've been too used to being spoon-fed glossy costume dramas on prime-time BBC 1: narrative elements  exposition, explanation, transition  are all smoothly storyboarded in to give you the slick entertainment experience this film seems resolutely not to want to give you. It could be that Douglas wasn't experienced enough as a film maker to make a grand epic drama (he'd only made his small-scale low-budget autobiographical Trilogy previously) The toil in the soil, the squelch of the mud, the hovel-like existence of downtrodden agricultural workers  not many rights or entitlements, very little power, hardly any choice in the matter  you do get a sense for all of that in this film. It feels like a dirty life, basic survival existence, punctuated by simple "entertainments  lantern shows, travelling fairs, communal singsongs, folk dancing  with life's inevitable fall ameliorated via mutuality, familiarity, warm comradeship.

There's a lot of film technique on show, which might be Douglas's self-conscious need to make it look stylistically different, uniquely his own: lots of long shots and slow shots, and focusing on still faces looking straight into the camera; abrupt and occasionally jarring transitions; using a lantern show to pick out salient features in the narrative  which i found a bit irritating (too fairy-tale like  i craved more of the nitty-gritty squelchy mud realism!) The last third of the film moves to Australia; we've already had 2 hours or so  and another hour gets tacked on. The shift to somewhere else breaks the intensity of focus; the immersion in that localised rural reality of rainy dirty Dorset becomes too dissipated. I felt most of this Australia section could have been edited down into a 5 minute montage. After watching this film i was curious to find out more about what happened on Google. I read several articles. So i guess if a film has inspired me to want to know more, get further "inside" the history of these Tolpuddle Martyrs  then as a historical document its succeeded. But as a Film film perhaps less so.

I doubt i'd want to watch it again. Still, i feel enlisted as one of Douglas's "comrades" now. I'm one of them. One of him. 3 of 3 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes A History of English Villages InfoBritain - Travel Through History In The UK : A History of English Villages Clovelly, north Devon English villages are known throughout the world for their beauty. But what makes them attractive, and how did they develop as they have? Although generalisation is difficult, it can be said that most English villages were founded at the time of Anglo Saxon settlement, and in the early Middle Ages, between 700 and 1300AD. The Saxons, unlike the Romans who they superceded, were not an urban people. Once the Romans left early in the fifth century, their cities and towns were abandoned, to be replaced by rural settlements. These eventually became villages. Most villages were laid out to a regular plan. The original focus of a village was usually a church, since this had been the main money earning establishment for the lord of the manor.

Ten percent of villagers' earnings had to go to the lord for church upkeep, and money was also charged for burials. Quite soon, however, churches were sidelined in favour of a village green, which as a market place, became the new economic focus of villages. The wealth of a local lord still tended to go into the church, but the green was where money was made. Village form then remained fairly settled until the huge shake up that was to occur after 1348 when bubonic plague decimated populations. Houses and their plots were left vacant. Some villages disappeared completely, but in those where people survived, plots were merged. In general the original regular layouts were loosened (see Tracing The History of Villages by Trevor Yorke). A second great period of change came in the early seventeenth century when enclosures began. A revolution was occurring in agriculture. Tools were improving and techniques were becoming more streamlined. As part of this development the practice of farming scattered strips of land was brought to an end. Scattered holdings were enclosed so that landowners had a block of land in one place. Many smaller landowners were dispossessed.

The pace of these changes accelerated towards the nineteenth century, and many people now landless either emigrated, or tried to find work in newly industrialised towns and cities. Back in the village it no longer made sense for farmers' houses to be gathered together. When the village had held a central location amidst many scattered strips of land it had been a convenient place to live. Now farmers moved into new buildings on their enclosed farms. The village houses were left to the landless labourers, Today the old open field system of farming survives in only one small location in Britain, at the Vile, Rhossili Bay , on the Gower Peninsula in south Wales. The site is owned by the National Trust, which now acts as landlord, renting out strips to local farmers. The estate village of Groombridge on the Kent/Sussex border. Note the front doors painted in the same colour, a typical feature of an estate village Even before the time when villages had become largely impractical, an idealisation of village life had begun. Since the sixteenth century the gentry had stopped spending their money building churches, and now concentrated on building impressive mansions and gardens. Villages were often built, or rebuilt, as attractive accessories to an estate.

Nuneham Courtney in Oxfordshire is an example. The rebuilt village became a picturesque introduction to the estate itself. The houses of such villages had a satisfyingly uniform architecture, and coordinated details, such as doors all painted the same colour. Dumbleton, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, Woburn in Bedfordshire, and Groombridge village on the border of Kent and Sussex are all estate villages. The remains of Upper Ettington can be seen at Ettington Park , a village moved by the Shirley family of Ettington when they enclosed the parkland surrounding their manor house in 1795. (The Shirley manor house at Ettington Park is now a luxury hotel, and accommodation can be booked through InfoBritain.) Lord Ragnor remodelled the Oxfordshire village of Coleshill in the mid nineteenth century, a village still run as an estate, with the National Trust as landlord. As can be seen almost all estate villages are of comparatively recent origin. Apart from a few important exceptions - such as Clovelly which is a genuinely ancient estate village - estate villages are an idealised recreation of the past rather than the past itself.

A Cottage in Selborne, Hampshire By the time of the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution villages had lost their central position in English life. A few model villages were built around water powered cotton mills - such as Richard Arkwright's Cromford in Derbyshire, Jedediah Strutt's Belper in Derbyshire, Samuel Greg's Bollington in Cheshire, and David Dale's New Lanark in southern Scotland. But for the vast majority of people home was now the industrial towns. Many might regret the passing of village life, and see an urban society as opening the way for social problems. In reality it seems that for most of the nineteenth century unrest virtually never involved the new urban working class. The people who turned to violence during the nineteenth century were more likely to be agricultural workers in the south and east of England. This latter group faced a precarious life working for farmers. They were more poorly paid than their counterparts in the towns, and their life would not be one that a factory worker would envy. Early forms of trade union organisation developed first amongst agricultural workers, with Dorset's Tolpuddle Martyrs being the earliest and most famous of these groups. All of this of course did not stop people looking back fondly at the age of the village.

William Cobbett wrote his Rural Rides in the 1820s, describing journeys around the villages of southern England, just at the time when many were falling into decay. Idealistic industrialists such as George Cadbury and William Hesketh Lever tried to recreate the past at Bournville and Port Sunlight . Great Tew in Oxfordshire, which has all the appearance of timeless charm, was largely built by nineteenth century lords, who laid out the green, and surrounded it with new or rebuilt houses with a common rustic architectural theme. In 1845 Irish MP Feargus O'Connor attempted to recreate an entire village economy, launching his Chartist Land Plan, a scheme to buy large estates, and provide tenants with three or four acres of land and a cottage. This plan to resurrect old England failed miserably, and O'Connor ended his days in an asylum. Some of his cottages remain however, and can be seen at Snigs End and Lowbands near Staunton in Gloucestershire. They remain as testimony to an idealised past coming up against a changing world. Other well known villages tell the same story.

Selborne in Hampshire, where Gilbert White wrote his classic Natural History of Selborne, became an icon of lost village life in England. Selborne had been involved in rural riots, so we can be confident that life there was as difficult as it was in most rural areas. Yet only a couple of years after the riots, a journalist from the New Monthly Magazine visited the village and chose not to see such problems. Instead he presented the traditional idealised picture: "Chimneys reeking with evidence of clean hearths in full activity, walls neatly covered with vine and creepers, in full bloom, and trim little gardens prank'd with flowers, seemed here to tell only of cheerful toil and decent competence" (New Monthly Magazine Dec 1830: Quoted in Gilbert White by Richard Mabey). Like Selborne, the ancient village of Clovelly in north Devon became a nineteenth century icon of a more innocent past. Tourist steamers would bring thousands of visitors in from Ilfracombe and south Wales. The image, inevitably, could not correspond to reality.

The popular Victorian writer Charles Kingsley lived in Clovelly as a child and loved it, which is not surprising for such a beautiful place; but he could also be realistic about life there. In one of his most famous poems, The Three Fishers, Kingsley wrote about a fishing tragedy out in Bideford Bay. Three young fishermen leave for their day's work, waved off by wives and girlfriends, but they are drowned in a storm. The village seems cold in its attitude to the deaths: "Men must work and women must weep." Life grinds on. People came to Clovelly in the nineteenth century to escape the business of the their urban lives, but in reality fishing, Clovelly's industry, was a tough business like any other. And so was tourism. The idea of Clovelly as a survival from a better, more community minded age was still being played on in an information film I saw at the visitors centre. Personally when I visited, I preferred listening to a recording of The Three Fishers in Charles Kingsley's house. Kingsley gave me the feeling that he loved a real place, and not an idealised place.

Tenterden, Kent - St Mildred's church closes the view, while also carrying the eye upward and outward Life in Britain today is primarily urban, and thousands of villages have been lost. Those village that remain do so as a kind of idyll of better days gone by. We might know that this image is misleading, and we might tell ourselves that only the best houses of the wealthy have survived, which skews our modern appreciation of village life. Nevertheless villages continue to represent communities which we feel have been lost in the fast moving, often impersonal world in which we live. The way village layouts have evolved helps them continue to play this role. By a strange mixture of accident and design villages have often developed a "closed vista", where an observer is prevented from seeing right through the village to the countryside beyond. This gives a sense of shelter from what Eric S.Wood in Historical Britain terms the "emptiness outside". Irregular placing of buildings, bends in the road or natural bowls in the landscape are all used in the placement of villages to achieve this effect. Many villages in Kent use the bend in the road trick - go to Leigh or Headcorn for example.

Villages using natural bowls to close the view include Loose in Kent, Groombridge on the Kent/Sussex border, and Finchingfield in Essex. Clovelly is built on a steep slope, as is Oxfordshire's Coleshill . Sometimes the view is closed by an impressive building. At this point I have to disagree with Eric Wood who suggests that all the visual effects of villages are designed to hide the world beyond. Ironically when the view is closed by a major building, an equal and opposite effect can also be achieved, in the way the grandeur of the highlighted building is exaggerated. Churches are often used to block lines of sight, and within the small confines of a limited view church spires fly higher into a bigger sky. Axbridge in Somerset, and Tenterden in Kent are two of the many villages which illustrate this. Restrictive visual effects, through a sense of contrast, can emphasise space. This can be seen at the famous location of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury in Dorset where the small world of a street on a hill contrasts with the great view out beyond the rooftops. Perhaps the attractiveness of this combination is only natural. People want security, but they want freedom too.

The conclusion I have come to sitting in village tea shops is that big desires that carried people beyond the village are there along with a wish that things would stay the same. The most fanciful village in Britain must be Portmeirion , built by William Clough Ellis between 1925 and 1975. Here dreamy village nostagia reaches its peak, and it is fitting that a famous television series caled The Prisoner should have been based here, about a man wanting to escape modern life which he feels reduces him to a number. But the prison he is confined to is The Village. Since most villages have now been lost, in conclusion here are some of Britain's most famous deserted villages; New Winchelsea, Sussex - Old Winchelsea on the Kent/Sussex border was destroyed by flooding. The displaced population built New Winchelsea between 1283 and 1288. Eventually the sea retreated leaving new Winchelsea without a harbour, and trade. Today visitors can see towns gates and part of the town walls. A few medieval cellars also survive. New Winchelsea is off the A259 between Hastings and Rye. There are no road signs.

National Grid reference is TQ 5904 1173. For sat nav use TN36 4EA. More information at Godwick, Titteshall Parish, Norfolk - Godwick was recorded as a village of fourteen peasants in the Domesday Book of 1086. Records of shrinking tax returns chart the village's decline in the fifteenth century. By 1525 only five households paid tax. Today the church tower survives as a partial ruin. Banks and ditches indicate the closes where houses once stood. The main street also survives as a long sunken path. Grid reference TF 903 219. For more information go to Hound Tor, Devon - This small village on Dartmoor probably dates to around 1000AD, founded as a summer settlement for herdsmen. Houses for permanent occupation were added in the thirteenth century. Traces of fields can still be seen nearby. The village was abandoned in the late fourteenth century, partly as a result of a cooling climate, partly as a result of the Black Death.

Rather than inhabitants being killed by the plague, a general fall in local population gave space in more hospitable places in the valleys. Today granite foundations of eleven buildings survive, the remains of houses, barns and bake houses. Hound Tor is just south of the village of Southcott, off the B3387. It is marked as a "place of interest" on AA road maps. Go to for more information. Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire - Wharram Percy is probably England's best known deserted village. By around 1280, there were about forty peasant families living here, farming fields around the village. Scottish raids, famine, disease and economic problems had reduced the small population by half in the fourteenth century, and by the fifteenth century there were only four farms left. By the nineteenth century there was only a solitary farm house. A forty year excavation programme has revealed walls of houses, farm buildings, boundary banks and crofts. There is also a ruined village church. Wharram Percy is now owned by English Heritage, who have provided information panels to help interpret the site, and to show how the village once looked.

The village is close to the B1248 about four miles south of Malton in North Yorkshire. It is marked on AA road maps as a "place of interest". See for more information. The Tolpuddle Martyrs I wish I could recommend the village of Tolpuddle! It sits south of the A35 between Dorchester and Bournemouth - but it's hardly Dorset's loveliest village. It hosts a museum , some statues to commemorate the martyrs. The more attractive scenes in the module where shot nearby at Moreton. The second half of the module was filmed in the courtroom in Dorchester, which is fun to visit. It's full of atmosphere, if you can ignore the naff wooden cut-outs of the judge and jurors. A historical Tolpuddle irony: the tour guides here recently went on strike because of low pay...

Question: The village of Tolpuddle, the home of the 19th century Tolpuddle Martyrs, is in which English county?
Answer: Dorset