The Dorchester Labourers and Swing's Aftermath in Dorset, 1830-8

The case of the Dorchester Labourers, the six agricultural labourers arrested and transported in 1834 for establishing a trade union among farmworkers in the vicinity of Tolpuddle in Dorset, remains one of the best remembered aspects of labour history. Nevertheless, study of the Labourers and their union, the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers (FSAL), has overlooked their role within a longer context of labour unrest and political activism within the region. This article argues that the FSAL was rooted in the Swing Riots of 1830, when labourers across the south of England protested against low wages and mechanisation, and was perceived by its leadership as being a means of both continuing the objectives of Swing and overcoming its failed methods. It was resurrected upon the Labourers’ return to Dorset in 1838, and illustrates a series of agitations in the region initiated by Swing and culminating in Chartism. This case study therefore suggests that the current emphasis on the Swing protests as a series of parochial and isolated disputes should be aware of a longer context in which these isolated protests led to a movement organised inter-parochially along class lines, and in response to national events.