ABSTRACT
Rural radicalism from 1872 to 1896 is dominated, historiographically at least, by the figure of Joseph Arch. The Warwickshire hedger and ditcher, and Primitive Methodist preacher, founded and became leader of the first agricultural labourers’ union (the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union) in the spring of 1872. During the next twenty years he rose from local notoriety as a radical 2 to national prominence as an MP. It is with Arch then that we must begin any account of these years, not because of his importance to Norfolk, although he was important in our county, but because of the prominence given to him by historians of the labourer, a prominence which I would wish to suggest is perhaps greater than is deserved.
