Insurrection: A Suffolk Tradition

Visit Suffolk [ http://www.visitsuffolk.com/ ] is an organisation that has the task of promoting tourism to the county and is one of many bodies marketing Suffolk as a picturesque and bucolic retreat for jaded city-dwellers & holiday home buyers. According to its website Suffolk has “a countryside dotted with quintessential English villages and thriving market towns.” It alludes to the county’s history, too, as a selling point. “Suffolk has its place in history,” it says, “tales of Anglo Saxon kings and Tudor Queens.” 

All this may well be true, but just as in the 18th century, when Constable and Gainsborough’s paintings portrayed a landscape and society at odds with the sordid reality and enormous social unrest of the time,  Suffolk’s pretty aspect hides real hardship and social division. There are many towns and villages where local people have simply been driven out by the high costs of housing (or even of beach huts). Closures and cuts in local services have resulted in the people of Suffolk taking to the streets in protest. But this is nothing new, the county has a long history of rebellion.  Here is my brief survey of the long tradition of insurrection in Suffolk.

In 1214, the Norman Barons of England met at the abbey in Bury St Edmunds and swore an oath to force King John to accept Magna Carta. The Barons, of course, were merely protecting their own interests. It would be a long time until the lower orders were even regarded as human beings. However, Bury itself would be the scene of many more open acts of revolt. In The History & Antiquities of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds by Richard Yates (1843, 2^nd  ed.) there is a chapter with the odd title of “Contests with Townsmen.” This, in fact, describes the ongoing political unrest in the town for almost the whole of the period of the Abbey’s power. During the mediaeval period, the Abbots had supreme power over the inhabitants of the town. Yates describes many of the conflicts  from 1264 onwards. He clearly feels that the Abbey had the right to hold totalitarian power over the town, and so his history has to be read in that light. In “1292 we find the convent and the townsmen again involved in a dispute, that appears to have been conducted with much asperity and animosity on both sides." There was more trouble in 1305 when the Alderman and burgesses were brought to court for "withholding fines ...  resisting the officers employed in distraining, throwing stones upon, and damaging, the roof of the church; stoning the workmen employed in repairing the same; beating the servants of the Abbey; etc." In 1327 "a vast force from the neighbouring towns and villages made several attacks upon the monastery and its possessions."

The events of 1327 in Bury were perhaps the most violent and certainly the most serious. What Yates describes as a “vast force” has been estimated at around 20,000 local people. They attacked the abbey and, over a period of several days, burned down and destroyed buildings in the abbey grounds and satellite  properties in nearby villages like Horningsheath (Horringer) and Fornham St. Martin. The Abbot still clung to power but concessions had to be made. Unrest continued until the Abbey lost its powers during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and gradually fell into disuse.

The image that the mediaeval peasantry were compliant or servile is not borne out by historical documents. The Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1351-1399; edited by Ray Lock (Boydell Press, 2002) give hundreds of examples of low-grade acts of rebellion and petty law-breaking amongst the bonded labourers of Suffolk in the fourteenth century. It’s hard to know whether these examples of “contempt of the lord” were political in any sense that we would recognise today but it certainly doesn't give an impression of docility:

   “Elias Typetot made an assault on the reeve of this manor, threatening him in breach of the peace and in contempt of the lord. Elias being questioned could not deny [the charge] and placed himself on the lord's mercy...” [Walsham Court, 15 July, 1363] ... “John Manser and John Pye each amerced 12d because in the autumn they made an assault on John Baner, the lord's bailiff, in contempt of the lords.”  [Walsham Court, 16 September, 1376] ... “Edmund Patel amerced 3s 4d for contempt of the lord, openly abusing all the jurors in full court.”  [Walsham Court 22 February, 1380] ... “William Grocer, the son of William, amerced ½ mark for contempt of the lord, making an assault on the lord's bailiff and beating him.”  [Walsham Court, 26 September, 1385]

There is an extensive account of the poll tax rebellion known as the Peasants' Revolt which took place across the whole of England in 1381, in Edgar Powell's The Rising in East Anglia in 1381 (Cambridge University Press, 1896). The principal leader of the rebels in East Anglia was John Wrawe of Sudbury, described in contemporary documents as a chaplain.  In June 1381, he led an attack at the manor of Overhall in Essex, near Long Melford, directed against the lord of the manor Richard Lyons, who was notoriously corrupt. The rebels proceeded to Cavendish and attacked the parish church where they took the goods of John de Cavendish which had been hidden in the church tower. They then visited various towns and villages in the area, such as Lavenham, Sudbury and  Bury,  their attacks being directed upon the property of the lords of the manor. Although condemning the violence in his account of the peasants' revolt in East Anglia, Powell admits that "we cannot...  withhold a large measure of sympathy both for the ideas which prompted, and for the results which followed the action." The rebellion was crushed and the ringleaders were punished severely. In Cavendish, the village sign still celebrates those events.

Although Suffolk was relatively quiet during the Tudor period, some Suffolk people joined up with the Norfolk-based Kett’s rebellion in 1549, in what became known as the “year of the many-headed monsters.” The rebellion was caused by increasing enclosure of common land by the wealthy. Although historians generally regard enclosure as a progressive move which eventually led to the agricultural revolution, the issue of enclosure was a matter of life and death for peasants who had traditionally survived by grazing livestock on common land. A contemporary account of Kett's rebellion, Stow's Summarie (1565), the earliest account, played down the fact that there were similar rebellions at the same time in Devonshire, Cornwall, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire and the contribution "made by the commoners of Suffolk to the commotion time.” But the work did admit that those who had 'encamped them selves' on Mousehold Heath (near Norwich) had come from both 'Norffolke and Suffolke' and gave as much attention to the execution on 5 February 1550 of Robert Bell of Gazeley, the leader of the Suffolk insurrection, as it spent upon the execution of William and Robert Kett.

From The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England by Andy Wood (Cambridge University Press, 2007): “The most powerful surviving plebeian memory...  comes, appropriately enough, from the town of Lavenham. Early Tudor Lavenham provides a strong example of continuity in local traditions of popular protest. In 1525, and again in 1549, the weavers and farmers of the Lavenham area rose in armed rebellion. In the spring of 1525, thousands of local people had gathered in the town in order to demonstrate against Cardinal Wolsey's Amicable Grant. ... Twenty years later, a Lavenham man named James Fuller admitted to plotting the new rising with John Porter. The target of the insurrection was to be the 'rich churles' and 'heardemen' of the locality, whom they intended to kill. They had had enough and in defending themselves, alluded to being let down over promises made  to the poor after the Kett rebellion: ‘we wyll not be deceived as we were at the last rysinge, for then we were promised ynough and more than ynoughe. But the more was an hawlter.’ ”

The Captain Swing period and the “bread or blood” riots, the rick-burning, machine-breaking and attacks on the clergy of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries have also been well-documented. In fact the labourers and farmers in Suffolk were accused of collusion, as  both were hostile to the parsons who insisted on taking a tithe of the farmer’s income. The Ipswich Journal repeatedly reported on court cases resulting from allegations that labourers had sent threatening letters to their “betters.” These are just two cases that were brought to court:

In By a Flash & a Scare, John Archer quotes from examples of such letters. One, from someone called Grimwade of Polstead begins: "Sir, This is to inform you that unless your tenant, Mr. Brown of Polstead, pays his men an advance of wages... he will be visited with a blaze..." In 1844, the subject of “incendiarism” in Suffolk was debated in Parliament http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1844/jul/19/incendiarism-in-suffolk

At Rushmere Heath, near Ipswich, villagers from miles around attended meetings to discuss labourers wages in 1830.  This was amid a huge amount of unrest in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex about wages, agricultural changes such as the introduction of threshing machines which meant that labourers were thrown out of work, and the tithe system which entitled clergymen to a substantial percentage of farmers' incomes.  The meeting at Rushmere was banned, troops were called in and three Ipswich craftsmen were prosecuted for inciting labourers to engage in "illegal assemblies."  Around the same time, “ in Ipswich the magistrates dispersed a ‘Disputing Club’ in an ale-house consisting of ‘very Inferior people’ ” [EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 125]

The violence of the labourers against their masters seems extraordinary today, but this was the age of the Houses of Industry, the Poor Law (which meant that if you were poor you could be forced to return to the parish of your birth), transportation to the colonies for petty crimes like poaching. There were no trade unions and no franchise for the labouring classes, in a county notorious for its rotten boroughs and corrupt politicians. Behind the images of the haywain and Flatford Mill, lay poverty and hardship, cruelty and murder. Luckily, the people of Suffolk would never put up with it.

Just Another Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday... Night in Glasgow

Last night’s Scottish Cup match between Celtic and Rangers was the fifth Old Firm derby of the 2010-2011 season, but it sometimes feels like Glasgow football supporters have asked the perennial question, Can we play you every week? and the Scottish F.A. has answered in the affirmative.

With the unlikely figure of El Haj Diouf apparently at the centre of tensions on (and off) the pitch, the match erupted into a predictable mixture of childish abuse and real violence. On Twitter, fans and non-fans seemed to be enjoying the fisticuffs more than the football. That seems a shame – or maybe the football wasn’t very entertaining. I don’t know because I won’t watch Old Firm derbies.

I was reminded of a Radio 5 Live phone-in a few years back when Alan Green received a call from a worse-for-wear fan of Celtic/Rangers (I neither know nor care) who was only interested in making some unpleasant sectarian remarks. Although I often find Belfast-born Green irritating, I had to applaud him for his reaction. He said (and I paraphrase): “Where I come from, son, that sort of thing leads to people being killed.”

I support a club, Ipswich Town,  which has an intense local rivalry. It has been dubbed the “Old Farm” derby, but that’s a media creation, as is the term “Tractor Boys.” No-one should underestimate the feeling between supporters of the two East Anglian clubs. There is occasional trouble, but it's relatively minor and the rivalry usually stops with the football. I’m sure that applies in Sheffield, Manchester, even in Liverpool, but things are very different in Glasgow.

Have no doubt about it, the Old Firm rivalry is sectarian. I won’t rehearse the background to it here. There are lots of reasons why the Irish Sea ferries are full of Rangers and Celtic fans when these matches take place and many of them are nothing to do with sport. It’s hard to imagine any other such hatred being tolerated, let alone celebrated. Kick It Out, the campaign against racism in football, which also campaigns against sectarianism and homophobia, is reporting this morning on racist abuse suffered by Diouf at last night’s game [http://www.kickitout.org/news.php/news_id/5038] but Celtic supporters were posting photographs on the internet last night of Rangers’ fans giving Nazi salutes before the game had even started.

It’s easy to bandy statistics about but they are shocking. Violence in Glasgow increases dramatically on days when the Old Firm matches take place and although in 2010 the BBC stated there had been a 24% decrease in (reported) domestic violence incidents on match days [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8557504.stm], it’s a decrease on the 88% increase in domestic violence on derby days that was reported in 2009. The figures are still appalling and  match-related violence in general is on the increase. And let no-one forget that domestic violence often involves the abuse of children as well as women.

For anyone who thinks that sectarianism in Glasgow is a kind of “fun” version of that in Northern Ireland (Troubles Lite, perhaps), I can recommend the 1975 film on the subject Just Another Saturday (with a cameo by Billy Connolly). There is too much history – well, not history exactly, it’s based on prejudice, not historical research. Why on earth are Rangers supporters still singing about a famine that took place in the 1840s? OK, so some English fans sing songs about the Munich disaster, but that doesn’t make it all right. That’s all wrong too.

The saddest thing for me about the resurgence of sectarianism yesterday was that it was on the same day that the Ireland cricket team performed so brilliantly in the Cricket World Cup in Bengaluru, India. Like the Ireland Rugby Union team, it represents the entire island of Ireland and does not seem to attract the same hostilities and rivalries. I look forward to the day when there is an All-Ireland football team. Think how much better the football team would be for one thing.

And, while we’re thinking along those lines, Glasgow United, anyone? No. Thought not.

The Academic, the Minister and the Schoolmaster: Arson in North Wales, 1936

In 1936, 174 men, most of them miners from South Wales, volunteered for the International Brigades and went to fight against Franco's fascist troops in Spain.  During the Spanish Civil War, approximately 300 people from Wales enlisted in the International Brigades and about 35 of them did not return home. This was an enormous contribution from a small country. Meanwhile, in North Wales, another – very different - battle was being fought.

On the 17th of September, 1936 a short item called “Fire at R.A.F. Camp,” appeared in The Times, which signalled the beginning of a pivotal episode in the history of Welsh Nationalism:

"A new charge of feloniously and maliciously setting fire to certain buildings, the property of the King, was preferred at Pwllhelli yesterday in the case brought against three members of the Welsh Nationalist Party, consequent on a fire at the new R.A.F. Armament Training Camp at Penrhos, near Pwllhelli.

"The defendants were committed for trial on the original charge, slightly amended, of causing malicious damage to contractors' huts and stacks of timber valued at approximately £1,000 and on the new charge under section 5 of the Malicious Damage Act, 1861. They are Professor John Saunders Lewis, of Swansea University; the Rev. Lewis Edward Valentine, Baptist minister, Llandudno; and Mr. D. J. Williams, senior master at Fishguard County School."

So why were three such respectable figures in the dock for setting fire to a few huts and who were they?

All three of the accused were ardent Welsh nationalists. Lewis and Valentine later became founder members of Plaid Cymru and leaders of the Welsh-language movement. They had attempted the arson attack because the "R.A.F. Camp" was destined to be the site of a bombing practice area, or “bombing school” on the Llŷn (Lleyn) Peninsula (Penrhyn Llŷn or Pen Llŷn) in north west Wales, near to Anglesey, in the modern county of Gwynedd.

What appeared to be most galling to Welsh people about the choice of that site was that the government in Westminster had looked at and rejected two sites in England: Abbotsbury in Dorset and Holy Island in Northumberland. Both had been rejected because they were the home of rare birds. There was no such wildlife on the Llŷn Peninsula and, as one of the defendants, D. J.  Williams, remembered in a BBC documentary Yesterday's Witness, made shortly before he died in 1970: "In the spring of 1932 there was an International Disarmament Conference under the auspices of the League of Nations held in Geneva. And at that conference it was the almost unanimous opinion of all the nations there that aerial bombardment of innocent citizens in towns and cities was too horrible a thing to be allowed to go on. ... A law-abiding, faithful nation, always loyal to the Empire in its day of need - surely this nation would oblige, and take the site of an aerodrome or bombing school within their territory? In 1935, when this project was finally decided upon, public opinion straight away became forcible against the very idea...  The whole nation stood on its feet in protest against it."

Although the proposed bombing school was unpopular, the local population was not as united as Mr. Williams seemed to think. Many people were in favour of it as a much-needed source of jobs at a time of high unemployment. It is difficult to know how closely in touch the three defendants were with local people, although the case became a cause célèbre and they received a lot of support from nationalists in Wales generally, none of them were local people. Saunders Lewis (1893-1985) was a historian, poet, dramatist, critic, and activist, one of the founders of the Welsh National Party (later Plaid Cymru). Acknowledged to have been among the most important figures in modern Welsh literature, Lewis would be nominated for a Nobel prize in 1970. Lewis Valentine (1893-1986) was a Baptist minister from Conwy, who was also a prime mover in the Welsh language movement. The son of a quarryman, his studies for the Baptist ministry had been cut short by the outbreak of the First World War. David John Williams (1885-1970) was also a leading nationalist and Welsh-language writer from Carmathenshire. He would later say that he had had the privilege of being educated at three universities: University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, Oxford and Wormwood Scrubs. He was a schoolteacher and a socialist and again a founder of Plaid Cymru.

When the then Conservative Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, refused to hear the case against the bombing school, despite huge protests, many people in Wales must have felt disenfranchised. D. J. Williams later said; “The swannery in Abbotsbury and the duckery in Northumberland had been sufficiently powerful means of desisting the English Government from going on; well, there was nothing for us to do but to take direct action. Three of us were selected to do the job, of whatever nature. ...  So we three met on Monday night, 7 September 1936 and decided to do what we thought was our duty. Namely, to set the aerodrome site on fire. It was not an act of vandalism, but a direct protest in the name of the whole Welsh Nation, in order that we could plead our case in a public court of law. ... My particular spot of setting on fire was a shed. It was a windy night. I had only one box and I used every match that I had, and I failed to get the fire going. So I had to go to my friend Valentine to borrow some more matches, but they failed."

According to the Times report, the night watchman, a disabled ex-serviceman named David Davis, came upon two of the arsonists and was assaulted by them. This does not appear in the slightly romanticised reminiscences of the BBC documentary, Yesterday’s Witness.

D. J. Williams may have failed to start his fire, but some of his colleagues succeeded. The three were arrested and taken to the nearest police station in Pwllhelli. There they handed in a letter addressed to the Chief Constable:

"We who sign this letter acknowledge a responsibility for the damage which was done to the buildings of the bombing camp this evening. Ever since the intention to build a Lleyn bombing camp was first announced we, and many other leaders of the public life of Wales, did everything we could to get the English Government to refrain from placing in Lleyn an institution which would endanger all the culture and traditions of one of the most Wells regions in Wales.

"But in spite of our pleading, in spite of the letters and protests forwarded from hundreds of religious and lay societies throughout the whole of Wales, and although thousands of the electors of Lleyn itself signed a petition imploring prevention of this atrocity, yet the English Government refused even to receive a deputation from Wales to talk over the matter.

"Lawful and peaceful methods failed to secure for Wales even common courtesy at the hands of the Government of England. Therefore, in order to compel attention to this immoral violation of the sure and natural rights of the Welsh nation, we have taken this method, the only method left to us by a Government which insults the Welsh nation."

The trial took place at the Assize Court at Caernarfon. In the Yesterday's Witness documentary, it was described vividly by Catrin Daniel:

"The scene at the court was quite extraordinary. The judge...  looked a little apprehensive, because I think the streets of Caernarvon were so crowded and the noise outside was so menacing that the judge grew more nervous as the trial wore on. There was deathly silence in the court as the three men made their defence, and when applause broke out, the judge got extremely nasty and rebuked Saunders Lewis several times for a rousing enthusiasm in the court." 

After ninety minutes the jury returned having failed to agree a verdict. A retrial was ordered, this time at the Old Bailey in London. Local people felt that this meant the defendants had no chance of winning the case.  At the Old Bailey, the defendants refused to speak in English as D. J.  Williams recalled:

"Saunders Lewis and Valentine refused to give their evidence in any language but their own, in Welsh. And that wasn't allowed, so they didn't say a word at all. But as it happened, no one of the prosecutors had heard me speak any English at all, with the result that I was allowed to speak in Welsh...  The funny part about it was that I had been English Master in the Fishguard Grammar School for fifteen years, and nobody knew apparently that I knew any English."

The trial ended with convictions and sentences of nine months. When they were released the three men were greeted with a huge audience of supporters at the Great Pavilion, Caernarfon. The bombing school opened a year later, but was found to be completely unsuitable for purpose and it was closed four years later.

Saunders Lewis later became a controversial figure. He had converted to Catholicism in 1932 (from a Calvinistic Methodist background) and resigned from Plaid Cymru in 1939, citing that he felt Wales was not ready to accept the leadership of a Catholic as his reason. His position during the Second World War was controversial as he felt that Wales should take a completely neutral position and supported the campaign for the Welsh to become conscientious objectors. He argued with the left of the Welsh nationalist movement and was seen by some as having an elitist approach. Perhaps his most controversial statement, though, was when he appeared to show admiration for Adolf Hitler – as late as 1936, the year of the arson attack, when he wrote: "At once he fulfilled his promise — a promise which was greatly mocked by the London papers months before that — to completely abolish the financial strength of the Jews in the economic life of Germany."

 Valentine returned to his ministry and Williams to his teaching, although both remained active nationalists all their lives. Despite feeling hard done by as nationalists who did not recognise the jurisdiction of English law, the three men may have been lucky to receive relatively light sentences. Arson on military premises was considered to be an extremely serious offence. (“Arson in a Royal Dockyard” was a capital offence until 1971.) Sympathy for this case will depend upon feelings for the nationalist cause. However, what is striking is that the government’s lack of willingness to engage and compromise with the protestors led to a few people taking an extreme form of action. It may not have worked as far as the Llyn Peninsula was concerned but it probably helped galvanise nationalist feeling in Wales for many years to come.