THE FARMWORKERS’ LOT

Farm work is arduous, mucky, full of difficulties and always held fast to the seasons and prevailing weather. I saw a lot of manual handling whilst growing up; stooking, building stacks, clambering up stone steps, ascending huge wooden ladders, and have handled thousands of hay and straw bales myself during my early teens. My cousin Geoff tells me he regularly saw his dad shifting sacks heavier than he was, and Uncle Ned had weighed not much over 13 stone for most of his adult life.

Comparing pay rates for such work is difficult today for obvious reasons, but we know that what had once been a wage of 50 shillings a week for working seven days was halved after the First World War. Corn prices tumbled from a fixed price of 80 shillings a quarter to 47 shillings in 1922. All of this was seen as part of the great betrayal to farmers and their workers. During the Thirties, the situation had changed little and became so bad that many farmers simply quit altogether.

Improvements

Faced with such a turn of events in agriculture, the government finally gave way to pressure from the farming lobby in 1931. The free-trade arrangement was overhauled and, by establishing Marketing Boards, they encouraged farmers to work together. The first of these, the Milk Marketing Board, came along in 1933, followed by those