MARCH 26 2023 marks the centenary of the totemic Norfolk agricultural workers’ strike. It saw over 6,000 members of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW), many veterans of WWI, go on strike against farmers attempting to slash their pay and increase hours.  

The Morning Post newspaper told its readers: “It is impossible to write without emotion of the agricultural distress prevailing in Norfolk. With wages at 25 shillings a week, the labourer is worse off than he has been in the memory of living man.”

The root of the strike was in the decision of the post-WWI Conservative/Liberal coalition government’s austerity policies, which included cuts in war-time financial subsidies to farmers and axed the minimum wage for agricultural workers — central tenet of the Agricultural Wages Board.

In 1923 with a Conservative government now in power the British economy was still in freefall, with tumbling food prices, the farmers wanted protection or subsidies and drew up plans in order to exert pressure on the government.

On March 6 1923 without notice or negotiations, the Norfolk farmers gave notice and imposed cut of 2 shillings and 6 pence to the 25 shillings weekly wage and in addition an increase in woking hours from 50 hours to 54 hours a week. Norfolk’s 20,000 agricultural workers were affected.

Despite this announcement it was still hoped the crisis could be averted. A delegation of farmers from the NFU and the NUAW met for last-minute talks on March 16, at 10 Downing Street, with prime minister Bonar Law after which Law dismissively stated: “So far as I understand it now, we cannot be of any help.”

A final crisis conference with Norfolk farmers and union representative was convened at the behest of the Bishop of Norwich on the March 24 but no agreement was reached.

That night, in a bold pre-emptive move the NUAW decided to issue a strike call to members right across Norfolk — instead of waiting for the decision of the farmers to implement a “lock-out” they would strike.

Edwin Gooch, then a Norfolk County councillor and later union president and MP for North Norfolk, stated: “I had begun to despair of the Norfolk labourer’s, the men had grown indifferent as to their present and future welfare ... The mantle of Kett and Arch had descended upon him, his son is rising and god is on his side.”

From Keir Hardie Hall, home of the Norwich labour movement, the union issued news, appeals for funds, met the press, sent out speakers and sent flying cycling columns of pickets into villages.

James Lunnon, the union’s inspirational national organising secretary, was immediately sent for and he arrived on his motorbike to take charge of the strike alongside the elected county strike committee.

The union’s general secretary Robert Barrie Walker echoed the view of the strike committee stating to a rally at Aylsham that “not a man or boy” in the union would return to work on Norfolk farms, until a settlement had been reached.  

The number of strikers varied but was never less than 6,000 and at one period was estimated at 10,000. Strike pay was set at 12 shillings a week for a married man and 6d extra for each child and a single man 6 shillings a week.

Many of the village leaders of the strike were non-conformist Primitive Methodists, it was in their chapels that labourers had learned self-respect, self-government, self-reliance, to read, write and preach. This religious discipline had been bolstered by the growth in socialist education and propaganda provided by the union and dynamic progressive politics radiating from Norwich.   

While the strikers enjoyed a high degree of public sympathy, it was the huge levels of support and solidarity in the Norfolk villages that was key to sustaining the strike.

Despite huge numbers of police being drafted from outside, columns of flying pickets on bicycles and on foot (many ex-servicemen men wearing medals and ribbons) supported by a village intelligence network that ensured that when strike breakers were brought in from outside the county to work the fields and farms, they were soon challenged.

For the most part this was carried out peacefully, the press of course chose to overstate the disturbances and while over 600 summonses were issued during the strike, many were for trivial misdemeanors or as often claimed by the strikers, the case of police intimidation and victimisation. In fact the worst episode of violence in the dispute involved a notorious farmer firing shots at a group of strikers.  

As the strike held solid and progressed into its fourth week with little sign of resolution, Walter Smith, president of the union, reiterated on April 18 that the union was “willing to have peace, but it must be an honourable and secure peace.”

Against the impasse in Norfolk, another crisis was being played out nationally, the prime minister was suffering from an incurable illness and his newly elected Conservative government was split over how to deal with the huge economic and unemployment crisis facing Britain.

Then as now, it was clear that the Conservative government was on the verge of collapse riven by splits and personalities.  

So not unexpectedly the union turned to Ramsay MacDonald — the leader of the Labour opposition and potential next prime minister — to help mediate in the dispute.

The National Farmers Union no doubt equally aware of a possible impending election agreed to talks, so it was that MacDonald and Harry Gosling (TGWU president) hammered out a compromise agreement.  

The Observer newspaper wrote of MacDonald’s involvement that “he has rendered signal service to the whole nation as an economic peacemaker ... The socialist leader of his majesty’s principal opposition has twice appeared as a moral arbiter with an intellectual grasp.”

The left was less generous of MacDonald’s role, Tom Wintringham stating: “Mr MacDonald’s intervention was not aimed at helping these workers in their fight for a living wage. He had other aims, and seems to have achieved them.”

The terms of the agreement effectively protected the pre-strike hours of 50 and a wage of 25 shillings — so the union could justifiably claim it had stopped the attack on their terms and conditions in Norfolk and as a consequence the rest of the country.

At a conference of Norfolk union branch delegates at Keir Hardie Hall on Saturday April 21, Gosling outlined the proposed agreement by stating that: “50 hours, is the number for today; but it is not the right number for another day to come.”

As the meeting debated the proposal, news arrived that the farmers had accepted the proposed deal. On hearing this the conference unanimously voted to accept the agreement and decided to instruct union members to return to work on Monday April 23 and then burst into a spontaneous rendition of the Red Flag.

The five-week-long strike represented the farm workers’ biggest battle since the great lockout of 1873, when farmers tried to destroy Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers’ union. As Norfolk was the stronghold of the NUAW, the strike was not only a fight against poverty pay, but a fight for the union’s very survival. 

The dispute had cost the union £30,000 in strike pay and it was nearly bankrupted, but Norfolk’s stand had stopped in the tracks, the farmers assault upon farm workers terms and conditions across the country.  

Most importantly the union had emerged stronger and unbowed.

This article first appeared in Country Standard.