Pages from Edwin Gooch: Champion of the Farmworkers

Edwin Gooch
Champion of the Farmworkers
Simon Gooch

Contents
The Old Boys 1
The Spirit of Sweet Reasonableness 3
Forge and Chapel 7
The Norwich Mercury 15
Mr Edwards with his Agent 23
Stand by the Old Union Ship 33
The Great Strike 37
Our County Work 45
Lift Up the Great Banner of Labour 51
A Jolly Good Fore Horse 59
On the Farm Front 67
Labour Will Yet Capture the Countryside 75
Even Tory MPs have Consciences 87
International Landworkers 93
Dinner with Mr Khrushchev 99
An East Anglian First and Foremost 105
Champion of the Farmworkers 111
Unite 121
Bibliography, Sources and Acknowledgments 123
Index 124

“Old Boy” in a Norfolk jacket—a large format photograph from an Edwin Gooch album. He is
possibly a relative.

The Old Boys
THE “old boys” used to be a familiar sight in the Norfolk and Suffolk
countryside of my youth, seated by the fire in village pubs or leaning on
a five-bar gate. They gathered weekly at the cattle market in Norwich that was
then held in the protective shadow of the castle. Wearing flat caps, corduroys and
old mackintoshes, sharing a well-aged joke, philosophising and politicking with
strongly-held opinions—they were more or less as described in the accounts of
farming life before the war by Adrian Bell, or recorded verbatim in the post-war
oral histories of George Ewart Evans or Ronald Blythe. The old boys were the
once indispensable but often overlooked agricultural workers, who had slowly
decreased in numbers through a century of mechanisation.
When I first met them as a teenager our family was living just over the River
Waveney in north Suffolk, having moved out of Norwich. In the late 1960s
and 1970s these jovial and loquacious “old boys” were probably only in their
middle-age, or perhaps just retired, but looking back now they seem figures from
another time. Our nearest neighbour, across a field from which all the boundary
hedges had recently been removed, was a remarkable character. A ploughman
who had been interviewed by George Ewart Evans for his 1970 book Where
Beards Wag All, he was full of dry East Anglian humour, tales of farming life and
his one great adventure—serving overseas in the Great War.
Over many generations agricultural workers emerge very occasionally onto
the national stage, in the Peasant’s Revolt, Kett’s Rebellion, the Swing Riots
and the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Times got so bad that they
were forced to act. Otherwise they were the hired men of landowners or tenant
farmers, “farm servants” limited in their role by a post-medieval class divide
created by the dissolution of the monasteries and enclosures of common land.
Unlike the peasantry of continental Europe they became, in a sense, strangers in
their own land—though retaining their own rich culture.
In the 21st century, like the shire horses they once guided in front of the
plough and lovingly tended, the old boys that I drank with in pubs that have long
since closed down all seem to have disappeared. In an agriculture of big farms,
vast machines, technicians and contractors, farmworkers have become solitary
figures.
But there was once a halcyon time, within living memory, when they had at
1

2 Edwin Gooch: Champion of Farmworkers
last received a fair deal thanks largely to their wartime efforts—their “place in
the sun”. Instead of insecurity of tenure and seasonal drops in earnings, after the
Labour Party’s election victory in 1945 agricultural workers achieved guaranteed
minimum wages, regular hours and paid holidays—and could no longer be seen
as anachronisms in the modern world.
This book is about the attempted resolution of those ancient inequities in
the mid-20th century, told through the life of my grandfather Edwin Gooch,
who played a leading part in that struggle for many years as the President of the
National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW). He was also Labour MP for
North Norfolk, first elected in the 1945 landslide. This history was conceived as
his biography, but in the process of telling his story it has also become a tribute
to all those “old boys” whose hopes for a better life in the countryside Edwin
Gooch devoted so much of his time to achieving.
Simon Gooch 2020.
The Norfolk county banner, prominent at all NUAW demonstrations, required two men to carry it
and four more on guy ropes.

The Spirit of Sweet
Reasonableness
WHEN Edwin Gooch died in 1964 he was a household name in his native
Norfolk, and well-known in Britain for his public roles in the National
Union of Agricultural Workers and the Labour Party. He had devoted most of
his life to politics and public administration, not in the sense of a conventional
career (he was journalist and sub-editor on the Norwich Mercury until elected
to Parliament) but as a calling, always on an honorary basis, acting from an
ingrained dedication to the betterment of his fellow-citizens.
His home town of Wymondham—where he had lived all his life—came to a
halt on the day of the funeral, shops closed in respect, farmworkers gathered in
their Sunday suits. It was as if the old rural world was saying farewell to one who
had helped bring it into modern society, working to banish the old inequalities
and habits of deference. Though national figures were in attendance, this was
essentially a local event, with the sturdy and phlegmatic East Anglian character
that Edwin himself personified in both manner and voice. He was proud to be a
“son of Norfolk”.
Edwin Gooch followed on directly from the pioneers of rural radicalism in the
county, in particular the legendary George Edwards who chose him as his honorary
agent in 1918 and then promoted him as his successor in the trade union and
the Labour Party in South Norfolk. By his dedication to the farmworkers’ cause,
Edwin helped at last—after the desperate battles for recognition in the 1920s,
the universal hard times of the 1930s and the collective war effort—to bring
stability and respect to an often precarious area of employment.
In his lifetime he saw a great transformation in farming methods. The
consequent reduction in the workforce was the undertow that sapped much of
the strength of agricultural trade unionism in more recent times and weakened
the identity of rural communities, and yet created a new emphasis on technical
skills for the younger generation employed on farms. The inevitability of change
would eventually force the NUAW, described by Edwin in the 1940s as “one of
the wonders of the trade union world”, to merge with the mighty Transport &
General Workers Union, now Unite, twenty years after he died.
This pragmatic decision did not stop the old forces of political reaction and
3

4 Edwin Gooch: Champion of Farmworkers
the new giants of agri-business threatening to undermine rural labour—as
shown by the controversial abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in England
(established in its supposedly permanent form by Labour’s 1947 legislation) by
the Coalition Government in 2013. Uncertainty remains a fact of a life for the
farmworker, though in practice a good farmer will always value a good worker.
Edwin Gooch carried the spirit of George Edwards’ belief in the power of
“sweet reasonableness” throughout his time in the Union and in Parliament.
However, this ideal could never be taken for granted, and when his preferred
co-operation with the farmers was compromised or undermined by bad faith, he
would not hesitate to call out the miscreants in public.
I was nine-years-old when he died, and my strongest memories of him are
of a pipe-smoking ‘Grandpa’, routinely offering me aromatic “baccy” from his
pouch when we went to call on a weekend “down Wymondham”, and of an old
man basking in the garden. But even as a child I could sense reserves of strength,
and something beyond the average in his personal significance. I was a little shy
of him as a result, though he was a kindly man with a very Norfolk sense of
humour and his manner was always cheery. I can still recall his equable response
of “fair to middling” whenever asked how he was, and his rather period farewells:
“Toodle-pip!” or “Toodle-oo!”.
We once went to visit him in the House of Commons, the family sitting
together in easy chairs in the Members’ Tea Room, and my only regret is that I
never heard that broad Norfolk accent in the chamber itself when speaking on
behalf of his farmworker brothers in the righteous but never solemn manner of
George Edwards and Joseph Arch before him.
Edwin’s second wife and widow Mollie suggested I might write a biography
one day, and I have toyed with the idea in the twenty years since she died. I
carried out relevant researches for a family history some while ago, and it was
a particular pleasure to read back numbers of the Land Worker and thereby get
a very vivid idea of the world in which Edwin Gooch operated. In the 1930s
the journal might promote Soviet collectivisation, but always used a romantic
woodcut of a country scene on its front cover. Those researches at Transport
House, courtesy of the then editor of Landworker Mike Pentelow, and at the
University of Reading’s NUAW Archive, form the backbone of this biography.
I have since inherited photograph albums that are a happy confusion of
family gatherings, holidays on the beach at Wells or on the Broads, and political
conferences—an evocative visual compensation for the lack of personal papers:
Edwin died in office, and had no time and probably no inclination to write a
memoir.
A series of substantial academic works on agricultural trade unionism in

The Spirit of Sweet Reasonableness
the 20th century have had quite a bit to say about Edwin Gooch—sometimes
critical from an ideological standpoint, as is the way with most political history,
but always acknowledging his integrity and achievement. One question posed
by these studies remains unanswerable: could a more radical approach have
achieved more lasting benefits for the farmworkers?
The recent inclusion of Edwin Gooch in the Dictionary of National Biography,
with an entry written by the late Professor Alun Howkins of the University of
Sussex, made me finally sit up and think that there might be a case for a book
that showed in more detail and individual character how in so many marches,
committees, articles and speeches (whether on a conference platform or on top
of an old hay wain on a village green) Edwin Gooch dedicated his life to the good
old cause of improving the lot of the working man in the countryside.
5
The Land Worker has a long and distinguished history of fine illustrated
front covers.

The family forge on Fairland Street, Wymondham, c1905—“S.Gooch & Son. Shoeing smiths.
Wholesale fork & shoe makers”. Edwin Gooch is standing by the door, next to his brother Albert
and father Simon.

Index
Agricultural Conference [1930], 52-53,
58
Agricultural Wages Board, 4, 26, 34, 36,
52, 76, 79, 96
Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act
[1924], 43
Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act
[1947], 79-80, 96
Agriculture Act [1920], 33
Agriculture Act [1947], 4, 81, 87, 95-96,
115
Amis, Arthur, 108, 117, 122
Anglia Television, 107
Arch, Joseph, 4, 9, 23, 29, 41, 83, 115
Athlone, Earl of, 68
Attlee, Clement, 55, 62, 82, 97-98
Baldwin, Stanley, 47, 62
Banham family
Charles Dawson, 10, 13, 18-19
Ethel, 10-11, 13, 17-19 [see Gooch,
Ethel]
Pat, 21, 47, 69 [see Reyner, Violet
“Pat”]
Paul, 19
Percy “Pip”, 19, 69
Peter Reyner, 19, 21, 47
Sarah, 10, 13, 69, 71
Walter, 69
Batty, Mr, 29
Bell, Adrian, 1
Bevan, Aneurin (Nye), 63, 79, 91, 100-
102
Bevin, Ernest, 70, 82
Bishop of Norwich , 15, 17, 37 see also
Fleming, Dr Lancelot
Blythe, Ronald, 1
Boddy, Jack, 122
Bonar Law, Andrew, 35
Boyd-Orr, Sir John, 77
Brabant, Ann, 7
Brent Eleigh [Harvest Horkey], 80
BBC ‘That Reminds Me’, 107
British Expeditionary Force [1940], 69
Brown, George, 99-100
Buckenham Band, 38, 48, 56
Buckingham Palace, 28, 70, 73, 92
Bulganin, Nicolai, 99
Burston Strike and Strike School, 25, 32,
62, 68, 122
Buxton family
Lucy, 75 [see Noel-Buxton, Lady]
Noel, 51, 74-75 [see Noel-Buxton,
Lord]
Thomas Fowell, 75
Callaghan, Jim [Lord Callaghan], 97,
99-100
Carbrooke, 56
Castel Gandolfo, 106
Castle, Barbara, 97
Central Boys School [Browick Road,
Wymondham], 15
Central Housing Advisory Committee
[Ministry of Health], 71, 90
Central Wages Board, 33, 54, 57-58, 60,
70, 79
Chamberlain, Neville, 67
Chambers, Rev George, 56-57
Christie, James, 45, 51, 55
Churchill, Winston, 20, 75, 83, 87
City of Norwich School, 15
Claridges Hotel, 100
Clark, Colin, 62
Coalition Government [or Liberal
Coalition; First World War and after],
124

26-27, 33
Coalition Government [1939-1945], 70
Coalition Government [2010-2015], 4,
122
Cold War, 84, 100
Collis, John Stewart, 67
Collison, Harold, 91, 100-101, 115-116
Common Market, 106
Commonwealth League Conference
[1920], 30
Communist Party [UK], 55, 83-84
Conciliation Committees, 33-34
Cook, A.J., 56
Cook, Cecily, 71
Cook, Sir Thomas, 75, 91
Corn Production Act [1917], 26
Council for Agriculture, 60
‘County Standard’, 84
Cozens-Hardy
Herbert, 75
William, 26, 28, 75
Crossman, Richard, 99
Curl, David, 105
Curl, Mary Agatha “Mollie”, 105-106,
109 [see Gooch, Mollie]
‘Daily Express’, 68
‘Daily Herald’, 38, 56, 76
‘Daily Mail’, 45
Dalton, Hugh, 46, 56, 64-65, 81, 105
Dalyell, Tam, 107
Damgate Street [Wymondham], 8
Dann, Alf, 84-85, 91
‘Das Kapital’, 9
Denny, Captain, 91
De Ruyter, Adrian, 94, 117
‘Design of Dwellings’ [see Dudley
Report], 71
De Soissons, Louis, 71
‘Dictionary of National Biography’, 5, 46
Discharged Soldiers & Sailors Federation,
28
Dorchester Shire Hall / Old Assize
Courts, 81
Driberg, Tom, 97
Dudley, Earl of, 71
Dudley Report, 71 [see ‘Design of
Dwellings’]
Duke Street Higher Grade School
[Norwich], 15
Durham Miners Gala, 97-98
‘East Anglian Daily Times’, 117
East Coast Floods [1953], 91-92
East Dereham High School, 19, 53
Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers
& Smallholders Union, 23
‘Eastern Daily Press’, 27, 30, 35, 42, 97,
105, 111, 116-117, 122
Edwards, George, 3-4, 9, 22-31, 34-35,
38-40, 43, 45-47, 51-52, 56-57, 59-
60, 63-64, 75, 82, 95, 115, 118
Edwin Gooch House [Cromer], 122
Edwin House [North Walsham], 101
Elizabeth II, Queen, 92
‘Empress of Canada’, 82
Erlander, Tage, 93
European Landworkers Federation, 94,
117
Evans, George Ewart, 1
Fairland / Fairland Hall [Wymondham],
27-28
Fairland Street [Wymondham], 6, 8, 12,
15, 17-18, 28
Fakenham, 29
Fakenham Cemetery, 63, 82
Fakenham Conference [NUALRW, 1911],
24-25
“Farm War”, 39-40
Farmers’ Club [speech, 1944], 72
Farmers’ Federation, 38
125

Fleming, Dr Lancelot, 117
Food and Agriculture Organisation
[FAO], 77-78, 81, 106
Forehoe District Council, 33, 49, 52, 59
Forehoe Union, 47
‘From Crow-Scaring to Westminster’, 35,
60
Gaitskell, Hugh, 100-103, 106
‘Gas House’ [Wymondham], 13
Gem Orchestra, 48
General Strike, 37-38, 47, 56
George V, King, 15, 17
George VI, King, 68
German Prisoners of War, 77-78
Gill, Eric, 62
Gladstone, William Ewart, 9, 24
Gooch family
Albert, 6, 8-9, 23, 28
Bill, 10-11, 19
Edwin, 2-13, 15-20, 23-24, 26-30,
33-48, 51-60, 62-64, 66-68, 70-73,
75-82, 84-94, 96-108, 111-119, 121-
122
Elizabeth, 7
Ellen, 7-8, 10-12, 19, 48 [mother of
Edwin Gooch, see Stackard, Ethel]
Ethel, 8 [sister of Edwin Gooch, and
wife of Victor Hayes]
Ethel, 18, 21, 23, 27-29, 37, 46-49,
53, 64-65,, 71, 89-91, 119, 122 [wife
of Edwin Gooch, see Banham, Ethel]
Frederick, 7-8
James, 7
Joanna, 92
John, 7
Laura Matilda, 7
Lilian, 8 [see Reyner, Lily]
Michael, 8, 18, 20-21, 37, 47, 49, 56,
63, 65, 72, 75, 77-78, 89, 105, 108,
121
Mollie, 4, 105-106, 109, 115-118,
122 [see Curl, Mary Agatha “Mollie”]
Sheila, 92 [see Ward, Sheila]
Simon, 6-12, 19 [father of Edwin
Gooch]
Simon, 92
William, 7
Good Templar Order / Grand Lodge, 11
Gosling, Harry, 41
Great Hockham Village School, 19
Great Yarmouth, 70, 82, 100-101
Groves, Reg, 29, 56, 64
Gurdon, William, 75
Haggard, H. Rider, 36
Hammett, James, 62
‘Hansard’, 77, 106
Harvey, Herbert, 118
Harvey, Sarah, 7
Hattersley, Roy, 122
Hayes, Freda, 69 [see Lane, Freda]
Hayes, Kevin, 69
Hayes, Victor, 19
Hazell, Bert, 70, 109, 111-112, 119
Hewitt, George, 24-25, 39, 51, 60, 82
Higdon, Annie, 25, 62, 68
Higdon, Tom, 25-26, 30, 32, 34, 39-40,
46, 51-52, 56, 61-62, 68, 118
Hill, John, 117
Hill Farming Bill [1946], 78
Hilton, Albert, 90, 107-108, 116, 118
Hingham Grammar School, 52-53
Hingham, Labour Rally, 42
Holkham Bay, 21
Holmes, Bill, 25, 46, 51, 56, 64
Homerton College [Cambridge], 19
Housing Act [1924], 43
Housing Bill, 89
Howkins, Professor Alun, 5, 45-46, 53-54
Hubbard, Thomas, 8
126

Independent Labour Party [Norwich], 23
Independent Order of Rechabites, 11, 49
International Labour Organisation [ILO],
80, 94, 102
International Landworkers Federation
[ILF], 77, 94, 102
Jackson, Rev Percy, 11
Keelby Church Rally [1938], 57
Keir Hardie Hall [Norwich], 37, 39-42
Kent, Duke of, 68
Kett, Robert, 9, 41
Kett’s Oak, 9
Kett’s Rebellion, 1, 114
“Khaki Election” [1918], 26, 75
Khrushchev, Nikita, 99-100
Kimberley, Lord, 27, 29, 47
Kimberley Hall and Park, 27, 41
King, Douglas, 75
King Edward VI School [Norwich], 15,
48, 52
Kirstead, 7
Labour Party, 3, 23, 25, 27, 29-30, 43, 46,
52, 55-56, 68, 70, 75, 80, 83, 90, 93,
97-99, 101, 112, 116
Labour Party Agricultural Advisory
Committee, 52
Labour Party Conference on Ireland
[1920], 30
Labour Party National Executive
Committee [NEC], 63, 78, 96, 99,
101, 103, 106
Labour Party Conference [1935,
Brighton], 63
Labour Party Conference [1946], 84
Labour Party Conference [1949,
Blackpool], 79
Labour Party Conference [1956,
Blackpool], 101
Labour Party Conference [1958,
Scarborough], 102
Labour Party Conference [1960,
Scarborough], 103
Labour Party Conference [1961,
Blackpool], 106
Labour Party Conference [1962,
Brighton], 106
Labour Party Constitution, 23
Labour Party National Rally [1955,
Filey], 97
Labour Party Permanent Agricultural
Committee, 80
‘Labourer’, 26
La Guardia, Fiorello, 78
‘Land and National Planning of
Agriculture’ [Labour Party Report,
1931], 55
‘Land Worker’, 4-5, 29-31, 34-35, 39-41,
54, 58-59, 63-64, 66, 68, 70-71,
75-76, 78-81, 83-84, 88-91, 93, 95,
97, 103-104, 106-107, 109-110, 113-
118, 122
Lane, Ellen, 69
Lane, Freda, 71 [see Hayes, Freda]
Lane, Mabel, 49, 69
Lane, Walter, 49, 69
Lansbury, George, 38, 55, 57-58, 60, 62,
68
League of Nations, 23
Ledeboer, Judith, 71
Lee, Jennie, 63
Liberal Party, 9-10, 24, 51
Lloyd George, David, 26, 29-30, 33, 51,
71
Lloyd George, Megan, 71
London County Council, 62, 89
Loveless, George, 122
Low, David, 61
Lunnon, James, 37-39, 64, 91
127

MacDonald, Ramsay, 41-43, 50, 54-55,
75
Marshall Plan, 80, 82
Marx, Karl, 99
‘Mauretania’, 82
Mayhew, Chris, 75
Mayhew, Fred, 117
Maynard, Joan, 107
McNab, Father, 56
Means Test, 55, 57
Merchant Taylors School, 19
Mikardo, Ian, 97
Ministry of Agriculture, 37, 114
Mitchell, Frances and Irene, 69-70
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 99
Morris, William, 23
Morrison, Herbert, 57, 62, 77, 83, 91
Mosley, Oswald, 55
Mulbarton Rally / Church Parade, 56,
109
Munich Crisis, 68
Museum of Norfolk Life [Gressenhall], 28
National Agricultural Labourers’ Union,
9, 23, 83
National Farmers Union, 35-36, 42, 54,
58, 67, 72, 77
National Government, 50, 54-55, 62,
75-76
National Health Service, 83
National Insurance, 83
National Union of Agricultural & Allied
Workers [NUAAW], 121-122
National Union of Agricultural Labourers
& Rural Workers [NUALRW], 24-25,
28, 41
National Union of Agricultural Workers
[NUAW], 2-3, 15, 22, 24-26, 28,
32-36, 45, 51-52, 54, 67, 76, 87, 90,
93-95, 100, 107, 117, 120-122
NUAW Archive, University of
Reading, 4, 56
NUAW Biennial Conference [1922,
London], 34
NUAW Biennial Conference [1924,
London], 45, 122
NUAW Biennial Conference [1930],
53
NUAW Biennial Conference [1936],
64, 76
NUAW Biennial Conference [1938],
65, 67, 119
NUAW Biennial Conference [1942,
Bournemouth], 71
NUAW Biennial Conference [1944,
Blackpool], 72
NUAW Biennial Conference [1946],
78, 83
NUAW Biennial Conference [1950,
Margate], 87
NUAW Biennial Conference [1954,
Cheltenham], 95-96
NUAW Biennial Conference [1958],
116
NUAW Biennial Conference [1964,
Felixstowe], 107, 116
NUAW Dorchester Branch [speech,
1929], 53
NUAW Downham Market District
Committee [speech 1954], 94
NUAW Executive Committee, 42, 47,
51, 63
NUAW Fakenham Demonstration,
56-58
NUAW Folkingham Rally, 55
NUAW Golden Jubilee [1956, Great
Yarmouth], 97, 100-101
NUAW Great Yarmouth Rally [1949],
83
NUAW Headquarters ‘Headland
House’, 26, 70, 107-108, 121-122
NUAW Mulbarton Rally, 56
128

NUAW Norfolk Agricultural Wages
Committee, 118
NUAW Norfolk County Banner, 2, 46,
56
NUAW Norfolk County Committee,
34
NUAW Norfolk County Emergency
Committee, 37, 41
NUAW Norfolk Dispute Committee,
39-40
NUAW Norfolk Distress Fund, 37-38
NUAW Norfolk Strike Committee, 40
NUAW Skegness Rally [1948], 82
NUAW Taunton meeting [speech,
1940], 70
NUAW Wellesbourne Rally [1949],
83
NUAW Wheatacre Branch Dinner
[1939], 68
NUAW Wymondham & Silfield
Branch, 117
NUAW Wymondham Great County
Rally, 56
National Union of Journalists [NUJ], 15,
23, 76, 121-122
National Union of Land Workers, 34
National Union of Railwaymen [NUR],
28, 38
Nazi Germany, 68
New Buckenham Silver Band, 56
New Deal, 54
‘New York Times’, 68
Noel, Rev Conrad, 56
Noel-Buxton, Lord, 75 [see Buxton, Noel]
Noel-Buxton, Lady, 76 [see Buxton, Lucy]
Norfolk Agricultural Wages Board, 116
Norfolk Broads, 4, 20-21
Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture, 62
‘Norfolk Chronicle’, 52, 90
Norfolk County Council, 33, 35, 44, 48,
52, 60, 70-71, 90, 106, 117
Norfolk County Playing Fields
Association, 48
Norfolk Education Committee, 25, 70, 90
Norfolk Farmers Union, 58
Norfolk Great Strike, 37-43, 47, 80
Norfolk Regiment, 19
Norfolk Wages Committee, 52, 58
Norfolk War Agricultural Executive
Committee, 73
North Norfolk Labour Party, 74-77, 84,
86-87, 92, 96, 103, 119, 122
North Walsham, 23, 101
Norwich Cattle Market, 17
‘Norwich Mercury’, 3, 9, 14-17, 20, 23,
60, 76, 112
‘Norwich Mercury’ St George’s Works,
14-15
Norwich Prison, 52
Nuclear Disarmament, 102-103
Oddfellows [Independent Order of, Loyal
Agincourt Lodge],11
Osmay, Mukdim, 114
Page, Wilf, 84-85, 121-122
Pathé News, 82
Peasants Revolt, 1
Peel, Sam, 34-35, 39, 42, 90
Pelican Inn, Tacolnestone [speech, 1923],
43
Pentelow, Mike, 4
Percy, Rev, 11
Phillips, Morgan, 90
‘Phœnix and the Turtle’, 91
Pius XII, Pope, 106
Primitive Methodist Connexion, 4, 9-11,
18, 28, 46, 49, 65, 105-106
‘Prosper the Plough’ [Labour Party policy
document, 1958], 102
‘Queen Elizabeth’, 92
129

‘Queen Mary’, 77
‘Radio Times’, 107
Ralphs, Dr Lincoln, 88
“Ranters”, 9
“Red Clydeside”, 27
“Red Letter” Election, 45
“Red Priest” [see Chambers, Rev George],
57
Regent Cinema [Wymondham], 82
Rent (Agricultural) Act [1976], 121
Rent Restriction Acts, 79
Representation of the People Act [1884],
24
Reyner, Jessie “Moss”, 8-9
Reyner, Lily, 8, 18, 20 [see Gooch, Lilian]
Reyner, Percy, 8, 18, 20-21
Reyner, Violet “Pat”, 19 [see Banham, Pat]
Roosevelt, President [Franklin D], 77
Royal Engineers, 72, 77
Royal Hotel [Norwich], 106
Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association,
116
Royal Norfolk Showground [Costessey],
112
‘Rydal Mount’ [Wymondham], 17-18, 38,
68, 89, 92, 107, 109, 118
Rye, George, 20
“Sack of Wheat” Dispute [1922], 33
St Faith’s Band, 38
St Faith’s Strike, 24, 82
St John’s Roman Catholic Church/
Cathedral [Norwich], 105, 119
Salmon, Pat, 56, 117
Sandringham, 25
Say, Ernest, 76
Scottish Farm Servants Union, 26
Seething, 7
Sennowe Park, 75
Shkuratov, I, 114
Small Holdings Act [1909], 24
Smallholders’ Union, 23
Smith, Walter, 25, 28, 34
Snowden, Philip, 54
Soames, Christopher, 114
South Norfolk Labour Party, 3, 23, 26-30,
32, 43, 45-48, 50-52, 55-56, 71, 75
Soviet Collectivisation, 4
Soviet Union, 54, 83, 99
Speakers’ Corner, 96
Stackard, Ellen, 7 [see Gooch, Ellen]
Stackard, Harold, 19
Stackard, Stephen, 7, 19
Standing Joint Committee of Working
Women’s Organisations, 71, 80
Star Hotel [Great Yarmouth], 100
Suez Crisis, 101
Swing Riots, 1
Taylor, W.B., 28-29, 34
Tied Cottage, campaign to abolish, 57,
78-79, 87, 101, 121
Tillett, Ben, 58, 105
‘Time’ magazine, 100
‘Times’, 112
“Tithe War”, 57
Tolpuddle Martyrs, 1, 10, 61-62, 81, 84
Tolpuddle Procession/Rally, 83-84, 65,
81, 122
Tolstoy, Count Leo, 25
Trade Boards Act, 36
Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act
[1927], 47
Trade Union Fleet of Mobile Canteens, 70
Trades Union Congress [TUC], 47, 61,
101
Transport & General Workers Union
[TGWU], 3, 41, 45, 121-122
Transport House, 4
Treaty of Versailles, 80
‘Tribune’, 102
130

Truman, Harry S, 82
TUC Memorial Cottages / Martyrs
Cottages, Tolpuddle, 62, 122
Unemployment Insurance [for
farmworkers], 58, 64
Unite, the Union, 3, 121-122
United Nations, 77
Vimy Ridge [Wymondham], 18
Volunteer Battalion Norfolk Regiment /
Volunteer Force, 19-20
Walker, Robert Barrie, 25-26, 34-35, 51,
53
Wall Street Crash, 54
Walsingham Old Courthouse, 38-39
Ward, Sheila, 89 [see Gooch, Sheila]
Waters, Alderman, 48
Webb, Sidney, 23
Wells-next-the-Sea, 4, 19-21
Wensum, River [1912 Flood], 14-15
Wesley, John, 37
Wesleyanism, 9-10
West African Engineers, 72
‘Who’s Who 1962’, 106
Wicklewood Workhouse, 41
Wild, Susan, 35
Williams, Tom, 80-81
Wilson, Harold, 103, 106, 111
Windsor Castle, 68
Winnifrith, Sir John, 114
Wisbech, 18
Wise, Lord, 117
Women’s Cooperative Guild, 71
Women’s Institute [Wymondham], 49,
71, 90
Women’s Land Army [1939-1945], 67
Women’s National Land Service Corps
[1914-1918], 26
Women’s Voluntary Service, 71
Woodcock, George, 116
Woodton, 7
Woolley, Sir Harold, 114
Woolworth’s Cafeteria [Norwich], 105
Workers Educational Association, 80
Workers Union, 26, 35, 45, 122
World Poultry Congress [1951, Paris], 93
Wymondham, 3-4, 7-15, 17-20, 23, 28,
35, 38, 43, 46, 49, 82, 89-90, 106,
111, 113
Wymondham
Abbey, 117
Cemetery, 11, 122
Civil Defence & Invasion Committee,
70
Cooperative Society, 52
Heritage Museum, 11
Junior School, 19
Labour Institute, 27-29
Labour Party, 28, 30, 71
Methodist Church, 10, 18-19, 49, 117
Parish Council, 33, 52
Urban District Council, 90
Young Farmers’ Clubs, 112
Young, George, 47, 51-52
“Zinoviev Letter”, 45
131