224 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



holders of the Glebe land. One of these was the owner 

 of the carpenter's shop, who was blind. The other two 

 attended the Strike School meetings. Mr. Sandy, the 

 blind man, gave up his land and went away ; but the other 

 two who would not give up their allotments were summoned 

 and had to go to Court three times. The Judge upheld 

 the legality of the notice, as he was obliged to do, but the men, 

 who were typical of those who followed the plough, knew 

 their Bible quite as well as the rector, and could interpret 

 it better, contended that they were carrying out a Divine 

 Law which said " As a man sows, so shall he reap." They 

 had sown their crops, and they were determined to carry 

 out the biblical injunction to reap what they had sown. 

 And in spite of the rector, in spite of the ponderous law, 

 reap their crops they did ! 



On Sunday, July 16, 1915, a great demonstration was 

 held in this little village, when eighteen trade union banners 

 were displayed, brass bands from Norwich and London 

 played, a special train from London ran conveying hundreds 

 of railwaymcn, and 1,500 people assembled. Special 

 constables were summoned, but for what purpose no one 

 seemed clearly to know. Blind Mr. Sandy, one of the 

 evicted Glebe tenants, returned to the village that day to 

 receive innumerable handshakes. 



An attempt was made to convert the school into a 

 Council School, which perhaps would have been the wisest 

 course to adopt. This, however, was not done, and the 

 Burston Strike School still (in 1920) remains a successful 

 institution controlled by a " National Committee," consist- 

 ing chiefly of trade unionists, of which Mr. F. O. Roberts, 

 M.P.. is the secretary. 



Strikes and rumours of strikes filled the air in rural Eng- 

 land in the spring of 1914. Living under the grinding 

 poverty of i2s. a week, some eighty labourers in the neigh- 

 bourhood ofChitterne, on the Wiltshire Downs, struck work 

 in February for a rise of is. in wages, and an hour less 

 work a day. The strike at Chitterne was a rebuke to those 

 farmers who are continually asserting that the men are quite 

 contented as long as the}' are not interfered with by agita- 



