ABSTRACT
Labour organizations in the Victorian countryside fell into two broad categories. The history of friendly societies is a long one, dating back in the view of some writers to the craft gilds and religious fraternities which protected skilled workers in the Middle Ages. In the months that followed, similar organizations appeared in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, the latter under the leadership of a local republican agitator named William Banks. The timing of this upsurge of militancy is significant, for it came at the end of a period of prosperity for English agriculture – albeit a prosperity in which the farm-worker had shared to but a limited degree. Press publicity followed rapidly, and from an early stage money began to flow into the union’s coffers, sent by a sympathetic general public anxious to help provide strike benefit -for most of the men were too poor to have resources of their own to fall back upon.
