Storm over dedicating union tree to the Queen
PROPOSALS by the National Trust to dedicate one of the West’s most important trees to the Queen have sparked controversy in a tiny Dorset village.
The magnificent sycamore that looms over Tolpuddle, near Dorchester, is steeped in significance to the trade union movement.
It is one of 70 trees that the National Trust announced earlier this year would be dedicated to the Queen to mark her platinum jubilee.
But the tree in Dorset is already dedicated to the Tolpuddle Martyrs and some in the village feel that the royal family was on the wrong side of history in the 1830s when six West farmworkers were sentenced to seven years of penal labour in Australia.
Janet Johnson lives in one of the Martyrs’ cottages in the village and she told the Dorset Echo that she thought the proposal insensitive.
She said: “It was parliamentarians and their friends, including royalty, who were responsible for the conviction and transportation of the Tolpuddle men for swearing an illegal oath.”
The agricultural labourers had met under the sycamore tree to discuss their poor wages and living conditions in 1833.
The men were arrested in 1834 for swearing a secret oath as part of the formation of a union and later became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Following a trial at nearby Dorchester the men were sentenced to seven years’ penal labour in Australia. Mass public protest followed the sentencing and subsequently the men were pardoned and freed.
The 320-year-old sycamore tree where the Tolpuddle Martyrs met has become a symbolic birthplace of the trade unions movement and to this day there is an annual festival dedicated to workers’ rights held in the village every July.
Today the tree is looked after by the National Trust and a spokesperson for the Swindon-based organisation has denied that it has been insensitive.
Jo Atkins told the Dorset Echo: “The trees chosen to be part of the Queen’s Green Canopy to mark her 70th jubilee were dedicated as notable trees which themselves have witnessed remarkable periods in history and have their own stories to tell.”
She added that the significance of the tree and the Tolpuddle Martyrs is recognised.
Other trees which will be dedicated to Her Majesty include the apple tree in Cambridgeshire where Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity and the ancient trunks of the yews framing the North Door of St Edward’s Chuch in Stow-on-theWold in Gloucestershire, which is said to have inspired the magical Doors of Durin in JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.