DORSET labourers’ wages were notoriously low from the 1790s onwards. William Cobbett wrote in Rural Rides that, “The labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds, and their looks indicate that their food is not nearly as equal to that of a pig.”

In 1833, the wage of agricultural labourers in Tolpuddle stood at seven shillings, with a reduction to six shillings planned. Since rent and a diet of tea, bread, turnip tops and potatoes cost a family 13 shillings a week, the situation was intolerable.

In October, six men — George and James Loveless, James Hammett, James Brine, Thomas and John Standfield — founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. They sought a wage of not less than 10 shillings and have become known to history and the trade union movement as “The Tolpuddle Martyrs.”

George Loveless, who was also a Methodist preacher, was their leader. As was then common, the society’s founders and new members swore an oath of loyalty. Trade unions had been lawful since 1825 and the society’s aims were peaceful. Rule 23 stated that “the object of this society can never be promoted by any act or acts of violence.”

The formation of a union was viewed as highly dangerous by the upper classes. A major Dorset landowner was James Frampton, Lord of the Manor of Moreton House, Justice of the Peace, Chief Magistrate and High Sheriff of Dorset.

In January 1834, he wrote to the home secretary, Lord Melbourne, complaining about the union. Melbourne suggested prosecuting the men under one of the Mutiny Acts of 1797, which prohibited administering unlawful oaths; “in cases of this description [it] has been frequently resorted to with advantage.”

Lord Melbourne is well-known to history as Queen Victoria’s mentor and for his tempestuous marriage to Lady Caroline Lamb, who had a very public affair with Lord Byron. He is less well-known for his spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies and for whipping orphan girls whom he brought into his household to serve as maids. “A few twigs of a birch applied to the naked skin of a young lady produces with very little effort a very considerable sensation,” he wrote.

The Martyrs were arrested on February 24 1834 and escorted to the home of Charles Woolaston, chairman of the Dorset Quarter Sessions and Frampton’s stepbrother. George was told that if he gave the magistrates the names of union members, and promised to have nothing more to do with it, he would be allowed to return to his wife and family. He refused.

Loveless and his companions were detained at Dorchester Castle pending trial. On March 15 1834, a grand jury of local magistrates and landowners was sworn in at the Dorchester Assizes to decide if there was enough evidence to indict the men.

The foreman of the jury was the Right Honourable William Ponsonby, MP for Dorset and Lord Melbourne’s brother-in-law. The jury included Frampton, his son Henry and Woolaston.

Unsurprisingly, the grand jury decided to remit the case for trial by a “petty” jury of 12 jurors. Many of these jurors were tenants of the grand jurors. The judge warned them that should they not find the men guilty, they would forfeit the opinion of the grand jury. They took only five minutes to find the men guilty.

Each of the defendants received the maximum sentence for swearing a secret oath of seven years’ transportation to Australia. The men’s wives pleaded for parish relief, in order to feed their children. This was refused by Frampton and Woolaston. The latter shook his fist at Mrs Standfield, telling her, “You shall suffer want; you shall have no mercy because you ought to have known better than to have allowed such meetings … in your house.”

Frampton could not contain his delight. He wrote to Melbourne declaring that, “The conviction and prompt execution of the sentence of transportation has given the greatest satisfaction to all the Higher classes.”

The response of the nascent labour movement was swift. On March 24 1834, “A Grand Meeting of the Working Classes” was attended by more than 10,000 people. On April 21, a six-mile-long procession of 100,000 protesters gathered in Islington. Twelve trade unionists carried a petition with 800,000 signatures to Parliament and meetings were held across the country to raise money for the families.

The fight continued until March 1836, when a new home secretary, Lord John Russell, arranged free pardons and free passage home. The men returned to England but faced widespread hostility from the Dorset gentry. In 1844, the Lovelesses, Standfields and James Brine emigrated to Canada. Only James Hammett continued to live locally. He died in the Dorchester Workhouse in 1891 and is buried in Tolpuddle.

The Martyrs’ tale is one characterised by abuse of power and a nauseating sense of entitlement on the part of the aristocracy and landed gentry, both in their treatment of the poor and sexual abuse of servants.

They made the law to suit their class and appointed judges and magistrates from their class to apply their laws in their interest. That is not so very different today. The middle and upper classes dominate the Commons, the Lords, the judiciary and our cultural institutions.

They exercise their powers selectively, and mostly in line with their privilege and moulded beliefs. The low-waged and those without a first-class education are viewed with suspicion, often looked down upon and by-and-large excluded.

The Martyrs are celebrated annually. To borrow Debs’s words, they opposed a social order in which it was possible for one man who did absolutely nothing to amass a fortune, while millions of men and women who worked all the days of their lives secured barely enough for a wretched existence.

Again, that is not so very different today. The wealthiest 1 per cent own the same portion of the nation’s wealth as the bottom 50 per cent. Company profits are often generated by semi-destitute workers abroad at Tolpuddle rates of pay. Workers’ wages at home are not infrequently so low that they must be topped up by the public with housing benefit and universal credit, in order to meet the family’s basic needs.

These benefits are employer welfare benefits, not employee benefits, because they enable employers to pay non-subsistence wages and thereby to increase their profits at the expense of the public.

Sir Stafford Cripps KC, Attlee’s chancellor of the Exchequer, was scathing in his article “A Travesty of Justice.” His chilling view was that in times of necessity, to preserve the social order, the courts will almost always be ready to strain the interpretation of statutes and to bias justice in favour of the dominant class and against any whom they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be disposed to changes which may have the effect of upsetting the existing order.

That was a very prescient observation. Just as the home secretary and Frampton used the unlawful oath prohibition in the Mutiny Acts to prosecute trade unionists not guilty of any mutiny, so the current Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act to outlaw and prosecute Palestine Action, who are no more guilty of terrorism properly defined than the Martyrs were mutineers.

Melbourne and Frampton correctly believed that the changes sought by the Martyrs would upset the existing order. Therefore, they used their considerable official powers to protect the vested interests and crush dissent, even though the non-conformists — those who refused to conform to an inhumane system — represented humanity and justice.

As in the case of the Martyrs, the current Home Secretary has gone for the “nuclear option” — any words of support for Palestine Action are a terrorist offence — precisely because her moral position is untenable. The evidence is clear. Israel is engaged in multiple acts of terrorism, including assassinations, starvation, illegal expropriation of land and the targeting of civilians. Its leaders have been indicted for war crimes. The government continues to support Israel, to train the IDF and to supply weapons. That comes within the definition of supporting terrorism in section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

In short, it is our government that is supporting terrorism, while Palestine Action is the party that opposes and condemns terrorism. Vandalism is not terrorism. It is difficult to believe that the Home Secretary thinks the suffragettes and American civil rights campaigners in the 1960s were terrorists because their campaigns involved criminal damage.

Anselm Eldergill was a judge in the Court of Protection until 2024. He is a solicitor, an honorary professor of law and an academic associate at Doughty Street Chambers.