214 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



tired of waiting for a Minimum Wage Bill, and once 

 more tried the weapon of the strike. 



This time the trouble arose in a little known village in North 

 Essex with the delightfully rustic name of Helions Bump- 

 stead. The strike area was small in dimension ; no great 

 names figured in it, and the numbers involved were small, 

 but it aroused an extraordinary amount of notice. It 

 started, not by a demand from the men for more money, 

 though wages were miserably small, being 135. a week, but 

 by the farmers' dislike of seeing so many of their men walk- 

 ing about with trade union badges ! Four farmers, who 

 had met together on market day at Haverhill, decided to 

 dismiss their men unless they left the Union, which was 

 the National Agricultural Labourers' Union. The men 

 received notice of dismissal together with a notice to quit 

 their cottages unless they surrendered their union cards. 



To the astonishment of the farmers, not only did the 

 men refuse to submit, but they walked off the farms, declar- 

 ing that they would not return without a rise of wages of 2s. 

 a week. Thus the lock-out initiated by four farmers 

 developed into a strike, embracing the villages of Steeple 

 Bumpstead, Ashdon, Sturmer, Ridgewell and Birdbrook, 

 besides Helions Bumpstead. 



The General Secretary of the N.A.L.U. tried to arrange 

 a conference with the farmers, but they were Early Victor- 

 ians and the Union was anathema to them. They refused 

 to have anything to do in any way with a Union man, 

 or a Union delegate. It was Lloyd George's fault, they 

 said, for unsettling the men's minds. 



Public opinion went dead against the farmers. The 

 Times in a sympathetic article said that : " As a class 

 the agricultural labourers of the country are an unorganised 

 body, incapable of concerted action in a national strike 

 movement, for comparatively few of them are yet enrolled 

 on the books of the Union." 1 



Nevertheless, when the lock-out occurred at Helions 

 Bumpstead, the farmers discovered that they were now up 

 against a new spirit ; and there is no doubt that although 



1 The Times, March 6, 1914. 



