Tolpuddle is a quiet village in the Dorset and the kind of place you could pass through without a second thought if you didn’t have a personal connection to it… except for the fact that, almost 200 years ago, an injustice was done that ended up furthering the cause of the workers rights that its perpetrators sought to destroy. We visited last week and spent some time in the excellent (and free) museum that continues to tell the story.

In the early 1830s, conditions for agricultural labourers were hard and the average wage was not really sufficient to subsist on. Six men, many of them stalwart members of the local Methodist church, agreed to form a society together but to keep the membership secret. For that, they ended up being convicted in 1834 of criminal action and deported to Australia. Rather than quelling potential trouble, it galvanised public feeling and, by the end of the decade, all six had been pardoned and returned to these shores although most later emigrated to Canada, where they kept a low profile.

For a former history student, I do remarkably little exploration of history but was glad to include my first visit to Tolpuddle on my holiday itinerary last week and learn a little more about this episode which I was aware of but only in a limited, fuzzy way.