The long term

The Norfolk strike, as Howard Newby has noted, was a watershed in the union’s history. ¹ It ‘proved’ to the executive, with one or two exceptions, that strike action, although unfortunately necessary on occasions, did not work. As James Lunnon wrote at the end of his report on the strike, ‘One feels that on the 25/- settlement we are humiliated.’ ² By 1923 Lunnon, Edwards, and many others saw the only alternative as state action, a direct link with those Liberal grandees who had founded the union in 1906. Even in 1976 Reg Bottini, then general secretary of the union could write, ³

There is one more lesson we must draw from the history of our Union. The last great strike in Norfolk in 1923 was called to oppose wage cuts. . . . The principal result of that strike was the 1924 Agricultural Wages Act. . . . Our 1974 and 1976 biennial conferences overwhelmingly defeated motions seeking to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board. The delegates recognised that whatever faults the Board has shown . . . there is no alternative for such a scattered labour force as agricultural workers to a centralised body fixing national rates below which no farm worker may legally be paid.