ABSTRACT
Researching farmworkers' history is like panning for gold, rather than hewing the rich seam of sources which most labour historians expect from their subject. Given the spread-out work force, the patchy incidence of trade union organisation, the high turnover of membership, the dependence on the commitment of a minority of activists, and the poor housing and living conditions of most farmworkers, very few manuscript sources survive. Even in a comparatively strong union county like Norfolk, which boasted over 300 branches in its heyday, the number of surviving branch minutes can be counted on one hand. The only known remaining minute book of the Norfolk and Norwich Amalgamated Labourers' Union of the 1890s, was collected accidentally by George Ewart Evans, the oral historian, in the 1950s. However, the relevant pages had been removed, and the empty ones filled with 'horsemen's recipes', a clear indication of the owner's view that posterity was unlikely to be interested in the contents. Writers of recent histories of the farmworkers' unions in Wales, Essex, Gloucestershire and Scotland have encountered the same problem.1
