Pages from Edwin Gooch: Champion of the Farmworkers
Edwin Gooch was a significant figure in agricultural trade unionism and Labour Party politics in the mid-20th century. After setting up South Norfolk Labour Party in his native town of Wymondham in 1918, he helped elect George Edwards MP; then came to prominence himself in the 1923 Great Strike of Norfolk farmworkers. As President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers from 1930, he served for almost 35 years in an honorary but influential role, and in 1945 he was elected MP for North Norfolk, becoming Party Chairman ten years later. He led the fight for decent wages and conditions for farmworkers, and campaigned against the tied cottage, with support from Labour heroes George Lansbury, Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan. In this book, his grandson, Simon Gooch, draws on his late father’s reminiscences, his own childhood memories and archival research—often using Edwin’s own words from the NUAW’s journal The Land Worker. The language of political debate comes back to life, creating a vivid portrait of a man whose strong Norfolk accent once rang around the House of Commons.
Edwin Gooch was a significant figure in agricultural trade unionism and Labour Party politics in the mid-20th century. After setting up South Norfolk Labour Party in his native town of Wymondham in 1918, he helped elect George Edwards MP; then came to prominence himself in the 1923 Great Strike of Norfolk farmworkers. As President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers from 1930, he served for almost 35 years in an honorary but influential role, and in 1945 he was elected MP for North Norfolk, becoming Party Chairman ten years later. He led the fight for decent wages and conditions for farmworkers, and campaigned against the tied cottage, with support from Labour heroes George Lansbury, Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan.
In this book, his grandson, Simon Gooch, draws on his late father’s reminiscences, his own childhood memories and archival research—often using Edwin’s own words from the NUAW’s journal The Land Worker. The language of political debate comes back to life, creating a vivid portrait of a man whose strong Norfolk accent once rang around the House of Commons.
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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.
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