Discussing the relevance of Vale in 2025

Vale Rawlings was a pioneer in the local trade union movement and a committed member of the Burton Trades Council. This month, the successor to that organisation, now called East Staffordshire Trades Council, is holding an evening to discuss the relevance of Vale in 2025.

The event takes place at Burton Caribbean Association, on Uxbridge Street, DE14 3JS, on Friday, 24th October, 7pm for a 7.30pm start. It's free to attend and Elaine Pritchard, from the Vale Rawlings Project Community Interest Company, will be setting the scene by outlining Vale's story and the values that drove his actions.

Other speakers on October 24th will include:

• Stuart Richards - Regional Secretary, Midlands TUC,

• Louise Regan - National Education Union and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

• Danielle Jackson - Regional Secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union.

It was 114 years ago this month, in October 1911, that the Burton Trades Council and the local branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), came together to organise a meeting in Burton upon Trent where the first town branch of the Workers' Union was formed.

Elaine said, "In 1911, if a working-class man fell on hard times through sickness, injury or unemployment, usually his only chance to keep his family together and fed was to appeal to a local charity in the hope of a handout. Vale believed that by organising through unions, the working classes could improve their lives. One of his major concerns was that work was a very dangerous place.

"The 1911 annual report of the Workers' Union, which I was allowed to see at The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, by its owners Unite the Union, carried a story and a powerful graphic illustrating the volume of deaths and injuries at work in Britain in just one year, 1910."

Image courtesy of Unite the Union.

Underneath the image, it said:

The Toll of Industry (the above sketch is an accurate portrayal of the annual toll of industry). During the year 1910, 3,474 persons were killed and 379,902 disabled whilst at work. This means that if a procession were formed of the victims of industry it would stretch 43 and a half miles with a corpse every twenty yards, between each corpse 100 disabled workpeople would be marshalled, marching five abreast, and if the widows and orphans followed in the procession it would be 45 and a half miles long. In each hundred disabled workpeople there would be approximately 45 miners, 41 factory workers and 14 persons from the following occupations - railwaymen, seamen, dockers, quarrymen and those employed on works of construction. The most serious thing is that the number of killed and injured is increasing.

Low wages, long, unrestricted hours and poor terms and conditions were also issues that unions wanted to campaign on and improve. Vale played a pivotal role in forming that first Workers' Union branch as he was a member of the ILP as well as the local trades council. He invited Charles Duncan, who was MP for Barrow-in-Furness as well as General Secretary of the national Workers’ Union, to come to Burton upon Trent and speak. Vale, and a railway clerk called Robinson, toured the town's many breweries in the days leading up to the meeting and gave out flyers to workers as they came off shift, urging them to attend.

It was not the first time that there had been attempts to organise Burton's brewery workers, but this time it was successful.

At the meeting, Vale reminded the audience how the brewery bosses worked together when legislation or other issues threatened their interests and said that workers needed to take a leaf out of their book.

Charles Duncan criticised the ‘wretched’ wages of 17 to 19 shillings a week paid to brewery labourers. He told them how brewery workers in Cardiff had secured higher wages by organising and urged Burton workers to do the same. The result was that 25 men put forward their names that night to form the first Burton branch of the Workers’ Union.

Vale wrote about the meeting for the Labour Leader newspaper and said, ‘We have kindled a flame that shall never be put out in Burton’.

In the years that followed, Vale was unflagging in his efforts to promote the benefits of union membership. Workers’ Union members paid a subscription of around threepence a week in 1911 to a general fund, but they had the option to also contribute to an out-of-work fund and a sickness fund to sustain them and their family in times of crisis. The union also paid for members’ funeral expenses.

Two years later, Vale was organising and speaking at evening gatherings in pubs around the town including the New Talbot, the Prince Arthur, the Wellington Arms and the Great Northern Inn at which between 50 and 90 men signed up each time. By 1919, there were so many Workers' Union members that the town could sustain 10 branches and Vale had been instrumental in securing an initial minimum wage of 25 shillings a week for unskilled brewery labourers.

Vale campaigned for universal suffrage, the vote for all adult men and women. He was jailed for assault, charges he denied all his life, after defending striking female factory workers on a Burton picket line in 1914. He was an internationalist who believed workers in all countries should unite and support each other in times of crisis. This was one reason why he was a conscientious objector during World War One - a stance that saw him jailed again. Between the wars, he served six years in local government, campaigning for more high-quality family homes, better roads and better health services. Council houses that he fought for in the 1930s still stand today as robust family homes.

Will Walker, of East Staffordshire Trades Council said, "The meeting on October 24th will explore what relevance the Vale Rawlings story has for today's workers in his home town and what we can all learn from Vale Rawlings and his inspiring work."