Joseph
Arch, the son of a farm labourer,
was born at Barford, Warwickshire, on 10th November, 1826. After attending
school for three years Joseph started work at the age of nine as a
bird scarer on a local farm. Over the next few years he developed
the skills of hedging, ditching and mowing.
On 3rd February, 1847, Arch married Mary Anne Mills, the daughter
of a carpenter. A year later Arch became a Primitive
Methodist lay preacher. In many of his sermons he dealt with the
financial problems of farm labourers. He developed a reputation as
a radical and in 1872 he was approached by a group of men who sought
his help in forming a farm workers' union. Arch agreed to their request
and during the next few months members increased rapidly. On 29th
May, 1872, the National
Agricultural Labourers' Union was established
and Joseph Arch was elected as its full-time
President. Within two years the union had over 86,000 members, over
one-tenth of the farm work force in Britain.
The Canadian government invited Joseph Arch to visit its country in
1873 where he examined the suitability of the country for British
emigration. Arch was impressed with what he saw and during the next
few years the union helped over 40,000 farm labourers and their families
to emigrate to Canada and Australia.
As well as trying to improve his members' pay and conditions, Arch
also campaigned for the extension of the franchise. William
Gladstone, the leader of the Liberal Government,
was sympathetic to these demands and this resulted in the passing
of he 1884 Parliamentary Reform Act.
In the 1885 General Election,
Joseph Arch was elected as the Liberal Party
MP for North-West Norfolk. Arch, the first agricultural labourer to
be a member of the House of Commons. In
1893 Arch was appointed as a member of the Royal Commission on the
Aged Poor.
Joseph Arch retired from Parliament before the 1900
General Election. He retired to Barford where he lived until his
death on 26th March, 1922.
(1)
Henry
Snell, Men Movements and Myself (1936)
Another
abiding memory concerns the tireless industry of these agricultural
workers. I doubt whether men and women ever worked harder, and I do
not believe that necessary and honourable toil was ever more inadequately
rewarded. They had no recreation beyond a perhaps weekly and half-ashamed
visit to the public house, or an occasional social event at one of
the local chapels.
If the position of the agricultural labourer today is an improvement
upon the prevailing fifty years ago, it is in no small degree due
to the organization started by Joseph Arch. The farm labourer today
enjoys the full rights of British citizenship; he can take part in
the local or national government of his country; he is, in so far
as he is organised, a part of the labour movement; his social status
has been raised; he is entitled to receive compensation for accidents;
he has the consoling assurance of the old-age pension; he enjoys some
little improvement in housing and sanitation, medical treatment, and
sick pay for himself, though not for his wife and children.
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