George Ewart Evans - Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay

This classic of oral history is both fascinating and entertaining to read. In the late 1940s George Ewart Evans set about recording the memories of the oldest inhabitants of the small village of Blaxhall in Suffolk. In doing so he records both the scale of the transformation of the English countryside at the end of the 19th century and makes a detailed record of rural life and agriculture before it was dominated by machinery and remained dependent on lots of human labour. I did not expect to be enthralled by the detail of how sheep were manually sheered, ale brewed at home and bread baked, but Evans has a knack for showing, through the words of the workers themselves, precisely the forgotten skills that kept agricultural communities going. There is also much insight into the nature of work itself, beyond the labour and skills:

After watching a furrow drawing or a ploughing match one has the feeling that the most cogent reason is rarely stated. To the ploughman the straight furrow is an end in itself, calling for all a man's skill, a king of quest after the mathematically unattainable: skill and craft carried to the point where the straight furrow becomes utility's tribute to art. The ploughman aims at a straight furrow because it looks right; and because it gives him the craftsman's satisfaction of a self-set standard; of doing a job as he feels it should be done, without need of praise except his own self's approval.

But in case the author and myself are accused of romanticising this labour, Evans himself cautions against this trap. In his chapter on the harvest, he says:

If, however, all that has already been stated about threshing gives the impression that there was something colourful or romantic about using the flail, we have the testimony of an old Suffolk farm-worker, who is still living, to disprove it. He was paid at the rate of 3s. a coomb for threshing; and he had no two thoughts about it: 'Threshing was real, downright slavery.'

Similarly there are many accounts of the reality of low wages and rural poverty. One of Ewart's sources George Messenger said:

My father brought up seven children on ten shillings a week. It was four rounds of bread each in a day - no more. And often it was a pinch of salt in a kittle of hot water and that was poured on the bread, and my mother would say "C'mon, there's a sop for you!" Kittle-broth we used to call it.

One of the joys of the book is the emphasis on the local dialect, and its interesting to note how some of this manifests today. For instance, the local pub in Blaxhall today (according to Google Maps) is called the Ship and has a picture of a viking type craft on its sign. According to Ewart the Ship had a plain sign in his day, because it was ambiguous whether the name refereed to a boat or the dialect word for sheep. Google maps provides another interesting diversion for readers - the village map in the front pages of this 1956 map shows little change to boundaries or roads, or even buildings over 60 years later.

There is little detail of organised resistance against poverty and inequality, though Ewart does say that many locals were deported to the convict settlements for poaching and smuggling, and some during the same period as the Tolpuddle Martyrs for "roughly the same reasons". Suffolk would be close to centres of agricultural trade unionism during some of the 20th century so it would be interesting to know more. But most "resistance" that reaches Ewart is through passive or secondary sources - local support/participation for poaching or smuggling. Some of these accounts are as fascinating as the sections on sheep, harvesting and village life. All in all this is a classic work of rural oral history.

Related Reviews

Horn - Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside
Mingay - Rural Life in Victorian England
Ashby - Joseph Ashby of Tysoe: 1859-1919

Raymond E. Feist - King of Ashes

King of Ashes is the first in a new trilogy by Raymond E. Feist, an author known for his long, intricate and interrelated fantasy book series. While certainly readable, the first volume of the Firemane trilogy felt extremely generic to me. The book begins with an appropriate fantasy map (which, rather annoyingly, doesn't include most of the places mention in the text) and opens with the aftermath of a battle. Or rather a massacre. Despite centuries of peace, the various kingdoms in the lands of Garn have broken out in war. Subterfuge has led to King Firemane's forces being smashed through betrayal and all of the ruling family murdered. All except a small baby, who is spirited away and brought to live on the island of Coaltachin a kingdom of Garn-wide mafiosi. Where he is named Hatushaly or Hatu for short.

Parallel stories follow different groups of people, particularly the talented smith who was apprenticed to the smith who was bound to the baron who saved Hatu. All of this is extremely readable, but Feist takes an age to tell a story, or describe something which partly explains the length of this work. There are long detailed accounts of how smith's do various technical things or explanations of the specialist training given to the young men and women of Coaltachin to ensure that they both are skilled at fighting, travelling, survival and spying and prepared to do these things unquestioningly in the service of their kingdom.

This latter aspect is particularly difficult as Feist, presumably ignoring any contemporary attempts to challenge some of the more traditional tropes of fantasy literature, has Hatu's best friend Hava (a young woman of his age) attend a camp to teach her the arts of seduction. Rather crudely Feist dwells on some of the more lascivious aspects of this training. In fact crude sexuality is a big part of the book as Feist struggles to describe Hatu and Hava's coming of age in ways that don't feel like a teenager's diary.

These problems however are only part of the bigger issue I had with the novel. Feist is so concerned with his world building and presumably laying out plot lines for the later novels, that 500 pages effectively do nothing but build up to the point when various of Garn's powers have laid out their plans and Hatu has learnt his true heritage. We've also had various semi-magical beasts and hints and wider changes in Garn.

Readers who like long, intricate fantasy worlds and can ignore (or prefer) fantasy themes and depictions (especially of women) that feel more 1970s than 21st century, will probably devour this book and the rest of the trilogy. I am afraid I won't be reading past volume one.

Pamela Horn - Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside

Pamela Horn is a prolific social historian whose recent work has been associated very much with the lives of the wealthy and their households. Her earlier work was much more focused on the poor and working classes, and the transformation of life in the countryside. Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside is an excellent and accessible account of life for working people in the countryside and is highly recommended for anyone trying to get a sense of what that life was like.

This was certainly no bucolic existence. Horn demonstrates time and again that life in the countryside was dominated by poverty, hardwork, poor housing and rigid social class hierarchies. Agricultural labourers were often trapped in relationships that made it hard from them to break free of individual farmers. Take the Dorset farmer, John Butler, who in the 1860s,

normally paid his workers once a month only, but in the interim several of them bought wood, bacon, eggs and butter from him, and then had the relevant sum,s deducted from their earnings at the end of the month. A similar policy was adopted in the 1880s and 1890s by workers employed by Mr Hyatt at Snowshill House Farm in Gloucestershire.

In January 1880, "William Ireland, a labourer ostensibly earning 12s. a week, 'left £1 for pig, 4 bushels barley 14s.' and as a consequence secured only 15s. in cash."

Such economic woes were closely tied to a village hierarchy which placed the agricultural labourer and their family at the very bottom. This began in childhood were school was very much a place were education was limited to what the farmers thought the children should know. In fact there was a general sense from the higher classes that too much education was a bad thing as it led to labourers leaving the countryside. But class position was firmly part of the curriculum.

a log book entry at Holbeton, Devon, for 1867 reads: 'Spoke to the children about making obeisance to their Superiors.' Soon even the dullest or most defiant youngsters realised where their duty lay and outwardly conformed o the standard expected of them. But inwardly they may have shared the doubts of Arthur Tweedy of Kirby Fleetham in Yorkshire, who remembered asking his father why he should say 'Sir' to the squire or 'anyone else who thought himself a step above' the farm labourers. His father's reply was: '"Sir", my boy, is only the nickname for a fool.'

The Victorian era was one where the final transformation of the English countryside in the interest of capitalism took place. As Horn concludes:

The very structure of rural society was itself changing, with the decline in the numbers of rural craftsmen and the massive outflow of labourers from the land during the second half on the nineteenth century. By 1900 country dwellers were a minority of England an Wales... In the new century these trends were to be intensified, especially as the ravages of World War I undermined still further the traditional values of the old deferential rural society.

A decent chapter summarising the growth and decline of the agricultural trade union movement provides a good overview of the struggles of the rural working class. Horn concludes, probably correctly, that while the movement did win wage rises, the gains on the political front - such as the establishment of parish councils, and independent political organisation were limited. It was "the village tradesmen, farmers and smallholders who, like Joseph Ashby of Tysoe, felt able to take advantage of the new opportunities to exercise democratic rights, rather than the agricultural workers".

Horn focuses mostly on the lives of ordinary people and how these changed. There are plenty of anecdotes and first hand accounts, of everything from the nature of work to the fairs, education, health and crime. I don't think the book gives as much of a sense of the great transformative processes taking place as G.E.Mingay's book Rural Life in Victorian England. But together these are good summaries of the lives of rural communities as England entered the 20th century.

Related Reviews

Horn - Joseph Arch
Horn - Life and Labour in Rural England 1760 - 1850
Horn - The Rural World - Social Change in the English Countryside 1780 - 1850
Mingay - Rural Life in Victorian England
Ashby - Joseph Ashby of Tysoe: 1859-1919
Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford
Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage

Sharon Duggal - The Handsworth Times

I wasn't old enough to really understand the Handsworth Riots when they took place in 1981. Living in Balsall Heath in Birmingham we were a relatively long way from events, but me and my school-mates certainly took notice. Even eight and nine year olds like us understood that something big was happening.

Sharon Duggal's The Handsworth Times is a study of what the riots meant to a small section of the Handsworth community. The novel centres on the Agarwals, whose youngest son Billy is killed by an ambulance during the rioting. Billy's death leads to the family's downward spiral as father Mukesh, a factory worker immigrant from India, turns to alcohol to cop with the pain. Usha, his wife, obsessively cleans the house to try and cope, and their three daughters struggle to deal with the tragedy and the unravelling of their lives.

The backdrop to all of these is Thatcherism, economic crisis and the rise in racism. The community faces all of these, and the Nazi National Front who turn up to sow further division. As Mukesh and millions of workers like him lose their jobs, it is up to ordinary people to try and stand up for justice and equality.

This isn't an easy novel to read. The story is as painful as the backdrop. Duggal brings to life the reality of unemployment, poor, overcrowded housing, racism and family tensions. In their different ways, each daughter finds a way of dealing with the tragedy, and at least one of them gets to kick a Nazi in the bollocks. Duggal's novel is well observed, full of black comedy and understanding of what it meant to be young, Asian and working class in 1980s Birmingham. If I've one criticism its that Duggal tries a little too hard with period detail. While I enjoyed the multiple references to songs, food and locations at times it was a little overwhelming.

I'm sure that many of the followers of this blog will enjoy this story of community resistance and resilience.

G.E.Mingay - Rural Life in Victorian England

The nineteenth century saw unprecedented change in the countryside. The period of Queen Victoria's rule saw the consolidation of industry and empire, and in the countryside the completion of a process that had begun when capitalism had emerged triumphant from the old feudal order. Enclosure, engrossment and the destruction of common property saw its conclusion in this period, but these processes had really only laid the basis for what took place in these years of change. This is the period when the old traditions died out alongside the old working practices and the rural working population declined from its 1851 peak. As G.E.Mingay makes clear in the introduction to his classic account of the period:

Quiet little country places, which once were disturbed only by the blacksmith's hammerings or the rumble of wagons, now resounded with the clamour of dozens of little nailers' forges or the thud and click of cottage handlooms and stocking frames.. almost overnight, the village's character was changed, and those who knew nothing but farming found themselves outnumbered by factory hands, whose own rural origins rapidly disappeared without trace.

The book documents these changes, but does it through an examination of the different groups that made up village life - the landowning squires, the tenant farmers, the agricultural labourers and the professionals; parson, land-agent, doctor and blacksmith. The period in question saw these groups and the relationships between them fundamentally transformed. One key aspect to this was the way that the growing international economy meant that landowners and farmers had to change their practises, a process accelerated by the great depression of the 1870s. Gentlemen farmers and landowners began to die out. Mingay quotes Rider Haggard:

Today there was a new type of farmer, who, as a rule, began life as a grocer, a village smith or a shoemaker. This person lives on about 10s a week and goes to a sale to buy and old wagon for 50s... On an 800 acre holding he employs about four hands, and sometimes not so many, and is unprofitable to the landlord, the tradesman, and the labourer alike. But after a fashion, he makes farming pay.

Mingay adds

With the depression came a breakdown of the old relationship between landlord and tenant. The landlord saw old tenants... throw up leases and depart... The old tenants, for their part, saw that the landlords were powerless to halt the economic decline of farming, and were even unable to offer much in the way of new investment in buildings or help with the expense of converting arable land to grass.

This was a period when a "new kind of farmer... strictly economical and severely business-like" arose, making the depression "a true watershed in the country's farming history".

If the old landowning class and the tenant farmers were being transformed, the agricultural labourers were beginning to see a transformation in their own lives. Readers might detect a tendency for Mingay to see the squirearchy in its most benevolent clothing. But he certainly doesn't hid the poverty and terrible living conditions of the agricultural labourers. Their low incomes, appalling housing, lack of access to education, running water, interior toilets and so on, is detailed in horrible detail. So to are their struggles - the burning of hay ricks and the early trade union movements.

Many, usually those not directly connected to the countryside, saw the solution as being about land.

There was great discussion, much controversy, a few plans, but little action. What did the labourer need to tie him to is village? Clearly he needed better wages, better housing, better conditions - though ti was disputed how bad these really were. Above all he needed land. Look at the continent. There was still a stable and numerous peasantry, having a large share of the soil, and responsible for a large share of its product. Land was the key. It would give the labourer a stake in the country, something to work for, something to stay for. And so came the Smallholdings Acts.

But this wasn't enough. Allotments, smallholdings and the like gave the labourer a bit of extra food. But it couldn't stop poverty. Thus the exodus from the country continued, particularly when industrialisation sucked in more workers. The markets in the local town, and ease of travel by railways, meant that rural workers got a taste for town life. The process was accelerated by the trend towards mechanised farming, the use of technology, chemicals and steam. As a result villages themselves changed, becoming "dormitories and satellites" of the towns which exploded in size.

Traditions, skills and knowledge that had lasted for centuries disappeared too:

The decline in village trades and crafts was perhaps less remarked upon by contemporaries because it was gradual,.. and because at its height it was overshadowed by the great depression in farming itself. But it was much more than a spin-off of the farmers' decline. It was... one of the long-term consequences which flowed from the transformation of Britain into a industrialised and urbanised society. As such, it has not attracted much attention from historians. But it was, nevertheless, highly significant in the rural content, for the going of the miller and the maltster, the dying out of the packman and pedlar and the eventual disappearance of the saddler, wheelwright and blacksmith make their own conspicuous contribution to the decay of the old country life.

But Mingay is no romantic, bemoaning the decline of a traditional life. He understands that these changes are part of a process that arose, in large part, outside of any influence the rural population could have brought to bear. What passed, in large part, was an old hierarchy that was based upon the brutal exploitation of a huge class of agricultural worker. This population had seen its old social relations broken, but the changes that came with Britain's industrialisation accelerated and finalised what was a long term decline.

Drawing heavily on eyewitness accounts this is a fine book indeed. Well written, sympathetic and focusing on the lives of men and women - from squire to reforming farmer, agricultural labourer to blacksmith - its a highly readable account for anyone trying to understand what the history of the countryside really is.

Related Reviews

Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford
Ashby - Joseph Ashby of Tysoe: 1859-1919
Jeffery - The Village in Revolt
Arch - From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography
Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage

Bell - Men and the Fields

M.K. Ashby - Joseph Ashby of Tysoe: 1859-1919

This is one of the classic historical accounts of life in an agricultural community during Queen Victoria's reign. Part biography, part autobiography and part historical study the book focuses on the author's father Joseph Ashby, though it begins with her grandmother Elizabeth and covers some of the experiences of her and her siblings. As such its an unusual book, rich in period detail, which links personal anecdote with historical records.

The book is well known enough that Joseph Ashby's memories are often quoted in other books about the period. Pamela Horn, for instance, uses Ashby's recollections of his time at school in her book on Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside. On occasion I've seen Joseph Ashby described as an agricultural trade unionist, which I don't think is an apt description. He certainly was someone who was influenced to agricultural trade unionism and saw its great importance in alleviating the poverty of the rural working class. That's not to say he wasn't an activist. He tramped the villages and communities preaching, recording, writing and campaigning for the Liberal Party and was asked, towards the end of his life, to stand as a MP.

Ashby's life in Tysoe is mirrored somewhat by Joseph Arch. In his early life Ashby recalls going to hear a speech by Arch a few weeks after his Warwickshire based agricultural trade union had been launched. Its a wonderful description which I wish I'd had access to when I wrote about Arch's life for the centenary of his death, or for the chapter in Kill all the Gentlemen about agricultural trade unionism. Ashby's eye for detail brings to life what a meeting would have been like - from the intimidating presence of the farmers, to the men collecting names at a table for the union.

Its impossible to separate the life of Joseph Ashby from the time he was living in. Its a period that saw the complete transformation of rural England. By the end of Ashby's life England's economy was well at truely industrial, cars sped through the countryside and the age of the horse was over. Machines had transformed farming and the age of the Workhouse was ended. It was also a time of struggle and reform. Tysoe seems to have mostly escaped the struggles of the union movement - though there were plenty of local politics to be involved in. Ashby, as mentioned, as a Liberal activist. At one time he also travelled around in a horse-drawn van recruiting campaigning for land reform for the "Land Restoration League" a movement "touched by Christian socialism". This time was primarily used by Joseph to make a survey of villages, some of which was used by the German academic Wilhelm Hasbech in his study of the English Agricultural Labourer. The van trip is fascinating, again for the insights into local conditions. In some villages they are given short shift by the local landowners, made to drive on. In others they are welcomed. Trade union branches are setup, sometimes with a sympathetic local clergyman taking up the reigns of the secretary until someone else steps forward.

The clergy play a big role in the book. The Tysoe vicar for much of Joseph's life is a pompous right-winger whose patronising attitudes are very much geared towards maintaining the status quo. Joseph himself breaks with the Church and begins to explore Methodism as a result of the vicar's attacks on the trade union movement. Like Arch, Ashby becomes a chapel preacher and like Arch travels the countryside to speak on Sundays giving him a network of contacts and friends around Warwickshire.

Ashby's mother, Elizabeth, is a fascinating character. Its explicitly written that Joseph's father was the owner of the country house she went to work in as a maid. Becoming pregnant she was sent away and, in a rather moving passage, only appears to have given up hope of connecting Joseph back to his rightful place when he becomes involved in the trade union movement. She seems a formidable woman, surviving the abandonment by Joseph's father, and the death of her first husband to bring up several children and help them to adulthood. She instils in them a love of books and writing. Joseph becomes both an author and a voracious reader. Something that means he doesn't end up labouring in the fields, but is able to earn a living as a surveyor. Eventually Joseph and his wife Hannah own a relatively decent farm, before moving away from the Tysoe area to a 200 acre farm in their last years.

Many readers will enjoy the book for it's description of a rural childhood, or the anecdotes about the history and persons of Tysoe. These are very enjoyable, but there is much more here too - particularly the sense of the changing countryside both economically and politically. Ashby is central to the first local Parish council, which he (and other local radicals) see as a vehicle for bringing about real change. M.K. Ashby reflects this when she concludes:

As I wrote this study I came to feel that he and his mother Elizabeth were the product of a very different community from their contemporary Tysoe, the ill-balanced and wretched village of the early nineteenth century, or the anaemic one of Queen Victoria's later years. They seemed to have come out of a more vigorous community - one still possessed of that first of the things of the spirit - responsibility. It seemed to me that during their time their village was struggling back to an accustomed balance, imperfect but basic.

There's some truth in this of course. But Tysoe was not unique, even if it did have its differences to other villages. The period written about, in fact the whole book, is defined by the gnawing poverty of most peoples lives. Joseph is relatively privileged, but not massively so. By the end of his life his community was suffering less, in part due to the massive changes that had taken place in wider society. The author sees the transformation as arising in large part from the 1832 Reform Act that led to the Poor Laws and the transformation of local authority. It is a sentiment that Joseph would no doubt have agreed with, but it is only half the story. Like Joseph Arch, Ashby never broke from Liberalism, which likely left him remote from the emerging 20th century struggles.

This said this is a really interesting account of rural life and its not surprising that EP Thompson describes it as a classic. Anyone interesting in local Warwickshire history or the struggles of agricultural communities will find it full of fascinating and forgotten material.

Related Reviews

Arch - From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography
Horn - Joseph Arch
Groves - Sharpen the Sickle!
Marlow - The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Jeffery - The Village in Revolt

Howkins - The Death of Rural England

Charlie Jane Anders - The City in the Middle of the Night

This is a really radical, innovative and interesting science fiction novel, one that stands out of a field that is seeing a resurgence in radical works that bring issues of gender, sexuality, class, racism and class back into the genre.

January is a tidally locked planet, which means that only a thin strip of it is inhabitable between hemispheres that are either frozen solid or boiling hot. On this planet, nature shapes the liveable biosphere in a very restrictive way. Our two main protagonists, Sophie and Bianca grow up in Xiosphant. Here life is as tightly regulated by the city-state. Outside life, indeed even life indoors, is strictly governed by a time cycle that determines when windows shutters open and close. Workers labour to earn one of a dozen currencies that give them access to food and shelter. Its not a worker's paradise, but it has allowed the human colonists of January to survive many generations since they lost contact with their orbiting mothership.

The second city, Argelo, is an other extreme. It's anarchic, free and without constraint. Where Xiosphant locks down personal life in the collective interest Argelo's inhabitants dance and party their way through life. Or so it seems initially. In reality, both cities are havens of poverty and social unrest, except that their masters have learnt to regulate them completely.

Its difficult to read Charlie Jane Anders' novel without drawing comparisons with Ursula K. Le Guin's Dispossessed. There two planets in close proximity exemplified capitalist and anarchist societies, the latter suffering from shortages that made any genuine freedom near impossible. But Anders takes this trope and develops it much further. Sophie and Bianca are young, idealistic, student rebels - Sophie from a working class background and Bianca, with whom she is besotted politically and personally is an upper-class success story, destined for greatness. Except, Bianca is plotting the overthrow of Xiosphant's society - her student rebel group wants to shatter the rigid structures and reopen historic links with Argelo. The rebellion is doomed, and the two rebels flee to Argelo.

If that were all, it would be a mildly interesting story. But several other factors turn this into a classic. The first are the natives. The Gelet are a hidden telepathic communal society who welcome Sophie into their group. Everyone else dismisses the Gelet as dangerous animals and their meat is hunted to supplement limited resources. Its easy to see parallels with how European colonists viewed the indigenous peoples in our own history. Sophie alone understands that the Gelet are part of the solution to the problems caused by January's erratic biosphere. But in the struggle between Xiosphant and Argelo such seemingly abstract issues matter little.

The second factor that is worth noting is the way the novel treats interpersonal relations. Sophie and Bianca's friendship, which initially seemed to about to tip into romance, is deftly handled. Their estrangement and eventual opposition develops through the book. Bianca's horror at her realisation that her former friend has feelings is painful from the reader's (Sophie's) perspective. Around the disaster that is Sophie-Bianca are a number of other wonderfully drawn characters, adventurers, mercenaries, and alien(s) who interact and shape, support the main characters. The wide cast of characters is important to the book, but also contributes to its general atmosphere in more subtle ways. I was quite a way through before I worked out that one of the most things that made this such a refreshing read was that the main characters were all female.

I said at the start that this is a radical work. Its also fair to say that its politically nuanced. The environmental forces that threaten Xiosphant and Argelo are easy metaphors for our own environmental crisis. The ruling classes of the cities look to technological solutions (as well as military ones) that mirror our own society's hope that green-tech will provide the answers. On January just as one Earth, these tend to make things worse. The real parallels is much less obvious and its lies in the way that the answers to the crises (social and environmental) are already there. On January it is the Gelet who have a vision of a new world, but it is hidden because the majority of humans cannot see past their prejudiced understanding of January's ecology. Again there are many parallels for our own times.

As I write this review I learnt that The City in the Middle of the Night is on the list for 2020's Arthur C. Clarke award. It certainly is a strong contender that deserves a wide readership.