From Crow-Scaring to Westminster: An Autobiography

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Edwards George. From Crow-Scaring to Westminster: An Autobiography

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE HUNGRY FORTIES

CHAPTER II. A WAGE EARNER

CHAPTER III. EDUCATION AT LAST

CHAPTER IV. PIONEERS AND VICTIMS

CHAPTER V. DARE TO BE A UNION MAN

CHAPTER VI. A DEFEAT AND A VICTORY

CHAPTER VII. DARK DAYS

CHAPTER VIII. FAREWELLS

CHAPTER IX. RESURRECTIONS

CHAPTER X. SUCCESS AT LAST

CHAPTER XI. UNREST

CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT STRIKE

CHAPTER XIII. DEFEAT

CHAPTER XIV. PARTING FROM OLD FRIENDS

CHAPTER XV. THE NEW MODEL

CHAPTER XVI. THE GREAT WAR

CHAPTER XVII. THE LABOUR PARTY

CHAPTER XVIII. PARLIAMENT

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This book is more than the record of an adventurous and useful life. It is an outline of the conditions of labour in our greatest national industry during the last seventy years. It is the story of years of struggle to raise the status and standard of life of the agricultural workers of England from a state of feudal serfdom to the relatively high level now reached, mainly through the organization of the Agricultural Labourers' Union. In that long struggle no single person has done more disinterested, solid and self-sacrificing work than my old friend and colleague George Edwards. The Union which he founded some sixteen years ago and in the ranks of which, at the age of seventy-two, he still plays a vigorous and important part, is but the latest fruit of generations of effort at the organization and education of the workers of rural England.

Born in Norfolk in 1850 George Edwards commenced farm work at the age of six. His long life of struggle against tremendous odds should be, and I am certain will be, an encouragement and an inspiration to many whose opportunities and means of social service are greater than his have been. And surely no greater service can be rendered in our time to the cause of national well-being than work devoted to the establishment of labour conditions in the field of British agriculture in keeping with the vital importance of that great industry.

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We children often used to ask this loving mother for another slice of bread, and she, with tears in her eyes, was compelled to say she had no more to give.

As the great war proceeded the condition of the family got worse. My sister and I went to bed early on Saturday nights so that my mother might be able to wash and mend our clothes, and we have them clean and tidy for the Sunday. We had no change of clothes in those days. This work kept my mother up nearly all the Saturday night, but she would be up early on the Sunday morning to get our scanty breakfast ready in time for us to go to Sunday-school.

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