IN 1833 in rural Dorset, six farm labourers gathered together in a Dorset village to say: “Enough is enough.” Exhausted by the efforts of feeding their families on ever-shrinking wages, angered by the rich unjustly growing richer at the expense of the poor, and determined to challenge this injustice despite the risks it posed, they resolved to form a union.

They would stand together against a ruling class intent on starving workers into submission.

They knew they faced possible arrest and transportation, but they found the courage to speak out and demand fair wages and dignity for them and their families. Theirs was a choice between remaining cowed and desperate or risking everything to demand a better life for working people. They chose bravery. Their arrest and trial, along with the campaign to pardon them and return them home, has become one of the founding stories of the labour movement.

Nearly two centuries later thousands of working people will gather this weekend in Tolpuddle, the village where these labourers lived, to celebrate this bravery and to reaffirm our commitment to a better life for working people.

Rather than gathering under a tree, or in a darkened room in Thomas Standfield’s house, we will come together in the fields around the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, proudly and openly. The atmosphere will be celebratory and comradely.

Bands will play and choirs will sing, alongside debates on key issues for our movement, such as trade union freedom, the future for our movement, votes for young people and contracts of employment.

It will be a chance for old friends to meet, new friendships to form and unions and political parties to forget petty differences and join together in a strong voice in support of working people. Children will play and learn about the values of our movement and their parents (many of whom came here first as children) will hope for a better life for their offspring. There will even be a wedding — a Tolpuddle first — after two union activists decided to make quite different vows to each other in this historic village.

But if the atmosphere has changed, the challenge for our movement has become even more pressing. We have to say “enough is enough” to this government in a month in which Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget declared fresh war on the poor, the young and the working people of this country, seeking to usurp the independently set living wage with a cheap, shoddy imitation.

This happened during the same month when the government set out legislation imposing draconian state controls on trade unions, especially those in the public sector who face four more years of government-imposed pay restraint.

A government that claims to want a small state seeks unprecedented control of issues affecting working people and destroys the concept of free collective bargaining. The challenges spread even wider and deeper. This month we have seen the cruel, implacable face of the EU troika, intent on bringing Greece to heel like a badly behaved pet, using the humiliation of a country to “encourager les autres,” as a clear threat to others who may challenge austerity. If that weren’t enough the progress of TTIP continues, bulldozing opposition as if ploughing fields for GM crops to maximise multinational profits.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, as if the road ahead is so beset with landmines that resistance seems impossible. But this is where we need to take stock and listen to the voices of George Loveless and his comrades. If they could find the courage and determination to fight for justice, then so can we. If they could set their minds to speak up for working people and demand better wages in the face of arrest and transportation, then so can we. If they could stand fast against a hostile government, judiciary and an entrenched class system, then so can we. They knew victory was not around the corner, but may take years. But still they tried. And so can we. Because we owe them — and ourselves — nothing less.

• Joanne Kaye is regional secretary of Unison South West.