Tom Baldwin, South West Socialist Party
The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival sees hundreds of trade unionists descend on a sleepy Dorset village every year. The weekend festival, organised by the South West TUC, commemorates a victory for the early trade union movement. In 1836 a mass campaign overturned the draconian sentence of transportation to Australia which had been imposed on six agricultural workers who were victimised for trade union organising.
Labour and Tory austerity
The first order of business for Socialist Party members at the festival was setting up our campaign stall. In previous years our banner said: ‘Fight Tory austerity’. It is now changed to ‘Fight Labour austerity’. The fact that the slogan still holds with the name of the party changed is an indictment of the pro-big business, anti-working-class nature of the Labour government.
Consequently, there had been a sea change in people’s attitudes. A striking Birmingham bin worker won a huge round of applause when excoriating the Labour council and government for acting like Tories in imposing fire and rehire and £8,000 pay cuts on them. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s a duck.”
The Socialist Party contingent on the march through the village got applause and people joining in with our chants of “When Labour say cut back we still say fight back”, “No cuts, no war, don’t fund Labour anymore”, and “Keir Starmer what a farce, build a party of the working class”.
New party
The prospect of a new party was on many people’s lips. We were able to have a real impact as our call for a working-class party with the trade unions playing a central role really grabbed people. We got dozens of signatures on the petition calling for the unions to lead the building of a new party.
We sold 110 copies of the Socialist newspaper and met a number of people who were interested in joining the party, despite the festival being seemingly smaller this year.
Through rain and shine, Socialist Party members were tirelessly building the ideas of socialism and putting forward the next steps needed for the working-class movement to build its power.
