WE WILL, WE WILL, WE WILL BE FREE!

In March 1834 the authorities ordered the arrest of six men: James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, James Loveless (George's brother), George's brother in-law, Thomas Standfield and his son, John Standfield.

The six were arrested for unlawful assembly and charged with 'administering unlawful oaths'. Although the Trade Union was perfectly legal they had made the mistake on its formation of taking a pledge of loyalty. The Unlawful Oaths Act had been passed in 1797 to deal with a naval mutiny, but never repealed. It was for breaking this law that they were brought for trial at the Dorchester Assizes.

During the trial John Toomer, (a local farmer), described how he found union rules in a box in the house of George Loveless. As expected the jury, (which included John Bond, John H.Calcraft, James C.Flyer, George Pickard Junior and Nathaniel Bond), found them all guilty as charged despite the fact that James Hammet (22), although a member of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers, had not been present at the meeting.

On 19^th March, 1834 the men were sentenced. The judge under pressure from the government of the day sentenced sent George Loveless and his companions to seven years transportation to the penal colony in New South Wales, Australia, 'not for anything they had done, but as an example to others'.

However the six men had became popular heroes, and a large protest movement formed. One of their supporters Lord John Russell in his argument to the Prime minister, Lord Melbourne to pardon the Tolpuddle Martyrs stated "that if being members of a secret society and administering secret oaths was a crime, the reactionary Duke of Cumberland as head of the Orange Lodges was equally deserving of transportation".

When sentenced to seven years' transportation, George Loveless wrote on a scrap of paper the following lines:

God is our guide! from field, from wave,

From plough, from anvil, and from loom;

We come, our country's rights to save,

And speak a tyrant faction's doom:

We raise the watch-word liberty;

We will, we will, we will be free!

Such was the furore surrounding the fixed trial and harsh sentence that 800,000 signed a petition in their favour, and all bar one were released within two years, the other a year later. Five of the men decided to seek freedom elsewhere and eventually emigrated to Canada. The last died there in 1902. 

This cartoon was part of the public campaign fought on behalf of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The men are shown begging for mercy from the king.