Tolpuddle

Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally

The annual working class festival to commemorate the memory of the struggle of the Tolpuddle Martyrs is held on the third weekend of every July in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle.

This popular event celebrates the fight to inevitable victory of the oppressed over the oppressor classes. International speakers join with workers' representatives, and progressive musicians and artists to make it an occasion to remember, as well as to offer a timely warning to the bourgeoisie that they must be alert to the final reappropriation.

The Tolpuddle Rally welcomed with enthusiasm the representative of the Palestinian People and gave a rousing cheer to her speech on July 15, 2001. She described in detail the present situation in Palestine where the people are under constant daily attacks from the Israeli aggressor army and are being killed on a systematic basis.

She explained the similarities between the courageous resistance in Palestine today and the historical class struggles in England against oppression. She also portrayed how the search, subsequent to the Holocaust, for a paradise on earth by those who emigrated from Europe was today also the reasonable demand of the people of living in that land. She made a special call for a boycott of all Israeli goods and contacts, and that support for the Palestinian People's struggle be at least equal to the support that was given to the South African people in their fight against the previous white racist regime which had been propped up by US and British imperialism, and on to ultimate victory. This just call was received with great warmth by all the progressive people assembled.

Until the time that the present heirs to the Tories and imperialist ruling class oppressors are removed by the working class, the anti-people forces will continue to privilege themselves with political and economic power, assisted by fellow travellers in all manner of parliamentary guises including the entire anti-working class British Labour Party.

Back to: Tolpuddle