i24 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



of the Union, the labourers secured every seat on the 

 Parish Councils. Only two purely agricultural labourers 

 succeeded in getting on to Rural District Councils in War- 

 wickshire. These were both active members of the Union, 

 and their names were John Mansfield, of Moreton Morell, 

 and Jarvis, of Warmington. Mr. George Edwards, 

 Secretary of the Norfolk and Norwich Amalgamated Labour 

 Union, and who became the most prominent leader of farm 

 workers since Arch's eclipse was elected with his wife to 

 the Erpingham Rural District Council in Norfolk. 



The 1894 Election at Horsford, St. Faith's Union, Norfolk, 

 (which became a storm centre of the revived National 

 Agricultural Labourers' Union) was fought with a good deal 

 of feeling and resulted in the return of three farm labourers. 

 This Council managed to do some good work. It hired 8 

 acres of land for allotments ; obtained a County Council 

 Enquiry into the condition of cottages and got some of 

 the worst evils remedied. Its most striking success was 

 that of preventing 200 acres of heathland being monopolised 

 by the squire and the neighbouring landowners. 



Democratic successes such as that at St. Faith's were 

 won only, as a rule, in open villages, especially where the 

 breath of freedom blew unchecked across heathland ; and 

 where squatters and small holders had some foothold upon 

 the earth. Where branches of trade unions still existed in 1 894 

 or where parishes lay close to mining or industrial areas, 

 the man who worked with his hands stood a chance of being 

 elected to Parish Councils. But in most villages the labour- 

 er soon found that it did not pay at any rate the labourer 

 with a wife and family to support ! Here and there, in 

 " model " villages, there was a show of democracy. The 

 landowner and the vicar, and the landowner's coachman, 

 the landowner's gamekeeper, his head-gardener, and his 

 butler would sit, though of separate classes, as one happy 

 family party, along with the blacksmith who shod the 

 landowner's carriage horses, and the saddler who supplied 

 the harness. But reforms, as might be imagined under these 

 circumstances, had to be warily suggested by any one but 

 the chairman. 



