The Duke of Northumberland and the revolting peasants: a cautionary tale
It has happened before – most famously in 1381. The peasants’ revolt of that year, one of the most widespread popular insurrections in English history, was a response to socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death. Prices had risen since the pandemic and wages had not risen as fast. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it!
The climax saw a 30,000 strong peasant army (or ‘mob’ as would no doubt be reported by the tabloids) led by Wat Tyler confront King Richard II in London. In effect, they were demanding an end to feudal servitude. It didn’t go well. Wat Tyler was killed and the uprising was then brutally suppressed across the country. There seems to be no record of that revolt spreading to Northumberland, but news coverage was patchy in those days.
Wooden sculpture carved in 1999 by Mark Goldsworthy from the trunk of a 120-year-old oak tree, to commemorate the struggle of the peasants in the 1381 Battle of North Walsham and the founding of the Agricultural Workers Union in 1906.
Image attribution: Kolforn (Wikimedia), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Now it’s happening again and this time it’s on our patch. The Duke of Northumberland is facing an uprising in Amble against a proposal to build on land known as ‘The Braid’. His property arm, Northumberland Estates, submitted a planning application to the County Council to build 94 apartments and 10 houses on an adjacent site. Local residents have launched a campaign of resistance: ‘Save our Braid’.
The Braid, an area of open grassland beside the Coquet estuary and close to the marina was registered as a village green in 2009. Then it was under threat of supermarket development. As a village green, the land is protected from development and has great recreation value in a town with little public open space. But the Duke owns a strip of land running through the Braid and is proposing to build an access road across it to the new development site. Local people are protesting about the impact of this road on the Braid and about the lack of local consultation. For information contact saveourbraid@gmail.com.
The revolting residents have shown that they will not cow-tow to their feudal overlord and the original planning application has been withdrawn, but Wat Tyler also thought he had been successful before his world turned upside down. The Squirrel says, “this land was made for you and me” and invites all readers to support the campaign to save ‘The Braid’.
John Gowing
Look back in Solidarnosc
Morpeth resident Ed Bober has kindly contributed an account of his experiences with Polish trade unions in Gdansk in 1980.
I went to Poland in the summer of 1980 to talk to the workers who were striking in a fight for democratic rights and for workers control and management in the workplaces.
All large scale industry in Poland was nationalised. Most Polish workers understood that publicly owned industry was preferable to private. However, they were also acutely aware that their industry was not as efficient as it could be.
In a state-owned economy, the crude and frantic drive for efficiency driven by the competition of capitalism, needs to be replaced by the intelligence of workers who understand the production process: workers control and management.
The bureaucrats who managed these industries formed a privileged caste at the top of society, interested only in defending their own position. In the main, they were not concerned with the experience of workers on the shop floor, the very source from which ideas could be generated to improve production.
The Polish people yearned for political freedom, meaningful elections, and the right to criticise the regime openly. At a superficial level some wanted a society like the West.
However, unlike the West, the real power in Gdansk was in the hands of the factory committees. In political terms, at least for the moment, the police were powerless, unable to repress the workers’ movement. There were marches with people calling for the downfall of the regime. Priests, radicalised by the revolutionary mood within society, delivered passionate sermons railing against the regime.
In those days before the internet, authorities tapped phones to hear the conversations of opposition activists. A network of brave school kids, the teenage children of the workers on strike in the shipyards, couriered messages around Gdansk keeping the workers leaders in touch with each other.
The regime could not prevent people from openly discussing and criticising. Everyone in Gdansk was wearing Solidarity badges, even though they were illegal! It was the beginning of a political revolution, which ultimately led to the downfall of the bureaucratic dictatorship.
This is not just a matter of historical curiosity. Today strikes are taking place across the world. Every strike poses the question: who has the power? Who should control and manage industry? Can the working class run and plan the economy democratically? Are they not the best placed to plan production, reduce the carbon footprint and improve conditions of work?
The regime in China today, also a one-party dictatorship, also presiding over a society in which many big areas of the economy are under government control, is facing rebellion from below.
The thirst of the masses for democracy may be similar. Western politicians and bankers will try to muscle in on any revolutionary overthrow of the regime in China. They will try to pressurise it with offers of loans and aid, to line up with Western capitalist interests. Yet forty years on, world capitalism is in a much weaker position, far less appealing. There is much more to democracy. All revolutions, including Poland 1980-81, give us a glimpse of far more extensive and participatory forms of democracy.
Ed Bober
Midwinter Feasts and Festivals
We can only imagine how the mid-winter might have been marked in the early years of the settlement we now know as Ponteland. Did our predecessors gather to mark the winter solstice, and celebrate the returning of the light? When Hadrian’s wall came to be, was the Roman festival of the god Mithras held near here on 25th December; the date adopted to celebrate the birth of Jesus, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire?
By Anglo Saxon times there was enough of a community for a church to have been built and Christmas celebrated as St Mary’s evolved over the centuries. And during this time the sounds of Christmas changed. From the Plainsong Chants in Latin to the seasonal songs of the Mediaeval travelling minstrels, to the first Christmas Carols of the C15th, using local folk tunes. Did the traditions of Tudor England reach here – evergreen decorations, and feasting over 12 days of Christmas? Perhaps in nearby castles but not for the poorer people in the countryside. After the Civil war, did people celebrate in secret when Parliament made 25th December an ordinary working day, and when wardens patrolled to make sure folk were abiding by the law and there were no festivities?
After the Restoration, with the Blackbird coaching Inn on the turnpike road to Scotland and next to the church, we can picture wassailing for a glass of ale being a local custom. There is something about gathering together, with music, and celebrating darkness turning to light, which is a common thread. Whether at a nativity or carol service in our local churches, carols in the pub, or a singalong at home, let’s continue in the steps of the good folk who have lived here before us, and keep tradition alive.
Christine Brown (December 2021)
‘An incredibly vile sport’ - otter hunting on the Pont
17 May
A gravestone in Elsdon churchyard is a tribute to John Gallon, of Street House, Ponteland, who drowned while hunting otters with his hounds in 1873. Otter hunting was considered a particularly brutal sport as the otter was speared after being chased down by hounds. Landseer’s ‘The Otter Hunt’ has been removed from permanent display at the Laing art gallery as it is considered ‘too upsetting for modern tastes’. Despite its gruesome nature, men, women and children actively participated in otter hunting, something which set it apart from other blood sports. Unlike other blood sports, the main excitement in otter hunting was seen to derive from the involvement in the visceral spectacle of the kill. Campaigners believed that ‘the kill’ had ill effects on the mental well-being of every person involved and induced behaviour that was not in keeping with certain ideas about gender and youth at the time. Early campaigns against otter hunting were orchestrated by the Humanitarian League, founded in 1891. One of the first men of influence to join the League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (1841-1911), owner of Blenkinsopp Castle near Greenhead in Northumberland. After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. From the late 1890s Coulson had also launched a prolific letter writing campaign against otter hunting in local, regional and national newspapers. Otters were widespread in Britain until the 1950s, and their subsequent rapid decline appeared not to be linked to hunting, which was not banned until 1981, but to the use of organochlorine pesticides in farming and to loss of habitat. There has been some recovery in their numbers, and otters are now seen on rivers in Northumberland and are regularly seen at the Gosforth nature reserve.
Michael Clarke (Spring 2022)