Searchable article text
Most of us within the trade union movement have heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs but how many of us know the story of the Ascott Martyrs? In 1873 Robert Hambridge of Crown Farm, Ascott who was a wealthy landowner sacked the men in his employment for joining the newly-formed National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU), which the Methodist preacher, trade unionist and (later) politician Joseph Arch had founded the year before. Mr Harbridge responded to the union by joining a group of employers called the Oxfordshire Association of Agriculturists (OAA), which had been set up to fight organised labour. In an attempt to continue working the land, he hired workers from the neighbouring village of Ramsden. The sixteen women from Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire tried to stop the replacement workers from working the land and tried to convince them to join the Agricultural Union. The women were arrested and taken to Chipping Norton and tried for obstructing and coercing two men to leave their employment. The magistrates hearing the case were the Reverend T Harris and the Reverend WE Carr who remonstrated with the farmer not to proceed with the prosecution, but he refused. The women could not afford to be defended by counsel and were sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour. The Police holding cells were two dark rooms where later that evening a large crowd gathered protesting at the arrests and desperately tried to free the women. Shortly after 1am after the crowd had dispersed, Police reinforcements arrived from Oxford to cart the 16 women off to Oxford Prison. It was a bitterly cold night and the women desperately tried to keep the two young infants they had with them warm. The following day a protest meeting was held at Chipping Norton which drew a crowd of 3,000 and raised £80 for the women. The treatment of the women was raised in Parliament and an appeal raised, eventually Queen Victoria issued a pardon to all the women with each receiving five shillings and a red flannel petticoat. The Agricultural Workers Union also gave each women £5 and enough blue silk material to make one dress. Upon returning to their village the women were considered to be true Martyrs to the cause! The village green has a memorial to the 16 women of Ascott with four benches circling a Horse Chestnut Tree and a named plague on each bench. Interestingly in 1871 The Trade Union Act was passed which allowed a legal existence for Trade Unions. However the unions were without any power and picketing was strictly illegal. More astonishingly in 1875 a Conservative government repealed The Property Act which allowed picketing to become legal under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: september 2015 :: RMTnews 22 MARTYR: An early photograph of one of the Ascott martyrsMartha Smith. Martha began a patchwork quilt whilst in prison, which was later finished by her daughter. The quilt has since been donated to the People's History Museum. The catalogue number for the quilt is: NMLH.1993.495 REMEMBERING THE ASCOTT MARTYRS Alison Buck recalls the little-known 140 year-old story of the Ascott Martyrs