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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted -  04/11/2011  :  09:16

PROTEST!

No, don't worry, this isn't Stanley's take on the recent riots that caused so much comment although I must admit that these got me thinking. I've always believed in protesting against something with which I don't agree and was quite pleased when I found out that one of my Challenger ancestors had been arrested in Ashton under Lyne in 1847 for 'seditious riot', he was a supporter of the Chartist movement which fought for, but never got, a people's charter. (Some things never change.) Margaret Thatcher said at the time of the Miner's Strikes in the seventies that 'protest was not the British way”. She was never further from the truth.

There has always been a strong tradition of public protest in England ranging from the Peasant's Revolt against the Poll Tax in the 14th century and the English Revolution right though to the current protests against the Lords of the Financial Universe who seem to have taken the government and country over. Such actions seldom result in immediate change because 'giving in to violence' is not seen to be good policy but there can be little doubt that they do influence our masters in the long run. So I got to thinking about protest in Barlick.

We occasionally see outbursts of local protest even today, the fight over the Esp Lane development is a good example but we seem to be far more well-behaved. Protest is more likely to be pursued in letters to the press and the authorities than in direct action. It wasn't always like this in Barlick, at times feelings have risen high enough to cause public protest on the streets. One of the things that struck me when doing the interviews for the Lancashire Textile Project was the amount of public participation there was in everything from church attendance and political meetings to hard core violent confrontation with the authorities involving arrests and prison sentences. Karl Marx observed that religion was the opiate of the masses and there is little doubt that it was a strong element of social control, perhaps home entertainment is today's opiate. We just can't be bothered to go out and have a good old-fashioned protest!

The most violent times in recent memory, and there will be many old folk who remember this, were the confrontations between the wars caused by the loss of jobs in the textile industry. It got so bad that at one point there was a pitched battle outside Sough Bridge Mill. Because they were a self-help shed, the Sough firm carried on trading through the 1932 strikes over wage reductions of 10%. 7,000 workers were out in Barlick, Earby and Skipton and 80% of the mills between Skipton and Preston were stopped. There was a nasty incident on the 29th of August 1932 outside the mill when a crowd gathered to picket. Ernie Roberts, who was there, told me that one of the main instigators of the protests was James Rushton who was a founder member of the Barnoldswick Communist Party in 1931. The police had brought extra men in from the West Riding specifically to act as strike breakers and they baton-charged the picket scattering them across the fields. The incident was serious enough for the Barnoldswick Urban District Council and the Weavers Association to protest to the Home office on the grounds of police violence but they replied that 'only necessary force' had been used. Two men were arrested. There were many more minor clashes and at one point policemen were sleeping in the engine house at Long Ing to prevent sabotage. In one confrontation at Westfield Mill a protest march from a meeting on Jepp Hill in the town was met by a barrier of police with drawn batons on Gisburn road.

I can well imagine that any young people reading this would be amazed that such things happened in our well-behaved town, not surprising I suppose, it was almost 80 years ago and to them this is ancient history but there will be people alive in Barlick who can remember these events. The important thing to remember is that these 'rioters' were not firebrands, they were ordinary people with a grievance, they felt powerless and the only way they could express their feelings was by protesting in public to fight for redress. Their actions did have an effect but this was not immediately evident. It took the advent of a World War in 1939 to make their labour valuable again in the defence of the country and it is no coincidence that some of the greatest improvements in conditions of work soon followed.

The thing that strikes me about our history of protest is that in normal times the workers are taken for granted and are invisible. This was the reason I did the LTP, to give ordinary people a voice and to let them tell their own story in their own words. I get the feeling that there may be a lesson here for the present day. We all feel helpless in the face of an economic situation that we did not cause. Unemployment rises, incomes fall and workers are thrown on the scrapheap. The gap between the rich and the poor grows ever wider and it is little wonder that we see protest growing. It took a world war to shake the system up and restore some balance after 1945. Nobody in their right mind wants to see this again or the bitter disputes that led to confrontation. It might be that today's version of the 1939-45 conflict is the economic wars we are seeing across the globe, make no mistake, this is what is happening. At the moment everybody is looking for scapegoats, it may be that the root cause is the system and this will eventually become clear. All we can do is watch and wait, violent confrontation will not sort this lot out!

One small fact for you. I used the word 'scapegoat'. I love words and try to understand their origins so I looked scapegoat up. It comes from the ancient Judaic custom at Yom Kippur when the High Priest symbolically laid all the sins of the people onto a goat which was then turned out into the wilderness to perish. I hope we aren't the final scapegoats in all this.

A public meeting on Jepp Hill in the 1920s. Probably a church event but Jepp Hill was used for political meetings as well.


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk

Author Replies  
Bruff
Regular Member


479 Posts
Posted - 04/11/2011 : 10:07
The Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt's famous painting 'The Scapegoat' is in the Lady Lever Gallery just down the road from me in Port Sunlight.  The frame is inscribed with quotes from Leviticus and Isiah, which note the explanation of the orgins of a 'scapegoat' above.

 
A smaller, slightly different, version is in the Manchester Art Gallery

 
Richard Broughton 



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panbiker
Senior Member


2301 Posts
Posted - 04/11/2011 : 14:53
Good read as usual Stanley, good picture too. It does look very much like a Whitsuntide church meeting prior to walking or something similar. Interesting to note all the hats. I can only see a couple of young lads near the back and the gent in the foreground (who could well be leading the service) who do not have headgear on. A fine looking lot in their titfers and Sunday best.


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 05/11/2011 : 06:24
I agree. The thing that I always note is the St John's box on the wall of the pub that held the communal laying-out board. If someone died you went to the box, got the board and laid the corpse out straight before rigor mortis set in. Made the undertaker's job a lot easier and of course many more people died at home in those days.

Some of us still wear hats......


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
Another
Traycle Mine Overseer


6250 Posts
Posted - 05/11/2011 : 07:20
I agree with panny. Nice piece Comrade. Nolic


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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 06/11/2011 : 05:56
Thanks for the comments......


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page


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