Improvements in the living conditions of farm labourers were slow and largely depended upon the willingness and abilities of the larger land owners. There was a keen-ness to protect the wages of men by ensuring the wages of women and children could never be in competition with men, but rather they should be “to support the family”. But the Fens in particular had a significant feature that proved to be a barrier to having housing close to where the work would be, rather the supply of gangs from the towns was heavily relied upon. Edward Stanton describes this feature in his report:
“But the most striking feature of many Fen parishes is, the concentration of the population at one end, close to the old high road, although the parish stretches several miles out into the Fen. In some parts even the farmers and their foremen live in the town; but in Deeping Fen, the farmer generally lives upon the farm, although his labour has to come from the neighbouring town. In the parish of Deeping St Nicholas, which includes more than half of this Fen, ‘there are over 14,500 acres, of which 700 are pasture land. On this there are only 108 cottages. On Lord Carrington’s estate of 2,400 acres there are four occupied ones only.’ The whole of this enormous tract is therefore supplied with labour from the large towns surrounding it, from a distance, that it, in some cases five or six miles. One result of this is stated to be irregularity of employment. The winter days are short, and when the distance to be traversed is also to be considered, farmers find it most expedient to dispense with all that can possibly be spared.”[i]
There was a particular class of cottagers that owned their own homes and these tended to be adjacent to Washlands that enabled them to earn income from other means as well as farm work such as wildfowling and eel catching. This meant that many in areas like Cowbit, Welney and the Isle of Axholme could own their own dwellings with gardens that also grew produce. In my opinion Edward Stanton wrongly attributes their ability to be independent to the fertility of their gardens, whereas it was their ability to exploit the income from the landscapes on their door-steps.
With respect to Agricultural gangs of men, women and children it appears that by 1900 little had changed in the Fens, “ In South Lincolnshire, and especially in North Cambridgeshire, the old "gang" system still exists, gangs of boys, and also of women and girls, under the charge of a gang-master or gang-mistress, being engaged by farmers at busy times, the gang-master or gang-mistress making the contract for the job with the farmer.”[ii]
When looking at gangs there is one particular sector to note that is the Irish Potato Gangs. Originally there was great seasonal migration for work and Lincolnshire being one of the best paying counties it attracted many gangs from Ireland. They came here out of necessity for the Great Famine that started in Ireland around 1846 with continued failures well into the 1850’s forced them to migrate or seek work elsewhere or starve. The railway enabled such journeys to Lincolnshire to be possible, certainly from 1847 onwards. By the time of Edward Stanhope’s report of 1867 there were regular gangs coming to the fields of the Fens and other parts for twenty years, and in some cases members of these largely family gangs gained permanent employment and lodgings. They largely worked in family units of men and boys and were on the whole highly regarded as hard-working and disciplined. However, they could be prone to exploitation in some cases receiving a third less income than their English counterparts and as such in some areas would “take the place of women”. On the whole the relationship was healthy and unlike some farming areas say in Lancashire there were very few Irish that took up permanent residence in the Fens, there was simply no housing.
On the whole the seasonal Irish labour market in the Fens developed into a mutually profitable arrangement that certainly lasted until my childhood in the 1970’s. It was perhaps misleading to call them “potato gangs” because in reality they worked throughout harvest from June through to the Sugar Beet campaign in November usually going home before Christmas. They would either lodge in farm labourers houses, or in cheaply built brick or wood “paddy huts” that were basic utilitarian accommodation. The work was highly valued as we entered the 1920’s Irish independence saw further economic upheaval in Ireland which we see matched with greater incidents of rivalry between gangs, for example in 1929 we see rivalry resulting in a pitched battle between gangs near Long Sutton with one driver being bombarded with mangolds![iii]
By the 1970’s you see the gangs becoming larger in that the old family units become businesses in their own right and employ people from the local population to work in their gangs. This developed and adapted into something like the gangs and employment agency staff that we have seen agriculture rely upon into the 21st century, although some of these businesses diversified and became farmers in their own right or developed into meat rearing and processing businesses.
In World War 2 the Irish gangs came into their own, as Ireland was a neutral country they were a vital contribution to the agricultural home front as we have seen with Mr Seaton’s employment of them earlier. My mother has told me about the Irish workers and at Spinney Farm, at the bottom of Twenty Drove. They had the same family group visit each year. One year, just after the War, one of the young lads in the gang fell seriously ill, so my grandmother took him in and nursed him back to health. After the gang had returned home they received a parcel in the post containing a thank you letter from the boy’s mother and a length of Irish linen.
When I started working for Barclays Bank in 1986 I mostly worked in the rural Branches, especially Holbeach and Long Sutton. As a result of my location a large part of my day to day work involved dealing with gang workers or their employers and farmers. Gang work was increasingly done by two dominant groups of people, newly arrived immigrants and seasonal migrants.
The seasonal migrants I would get to know over time. Some would be internal migrants within the UK, such as gipsies and travellers from Cornwall who would follow the flower picking, usually daffodils, up through the country towards Scotland where they would switch to fruit picking and working their way back down. Other seasonal migrants would be from areas that had suffered economic devastation in their home areas under Margaret Thatcher’s government such as the steel towns of Sheffield and Corby, or coal mining areas of Durham and Yorkshire. Some moved to the area to stay and transferred from field work to the better pay and conditions of the local food processing factories and pack houses.
1990, saw a big increase in white South Africans, largely as seasonal workers and they too developed into residents. This was shortly followed by black South Africans, in particular I met a lot of people from Namibia. Some of them too became residents, but gravitated towards Peterborough more than their white counterparts. The following wave was from Portugal with the greatest uptake of residency being seen in Boston, but also in smaller fenland towns in the Cambridgeshire Fens such as Soham and March. One such migrant taught me a lesson as I looked at him sideways because he had presented a Portuguese and Indian passport to me by retorting, “You get Indians in Portugal too!” The next largest wave of seasonal and permanent migration was from Poland, initially a lot of seasonal workers were middle-aged men with Lech Walesa moustaches that never seemed to feel the cold. They were soon followed by a large wave of young people in their early twenties who explained to me that it was very hard to get full time work in Poland until you were either married or thirty years old, rather you had to do several part time jobs. One group of seasonal Polish fruit-pickers would arrive in a van advertising lingerie on the side, the explanation I was given by the attractive Polish lady was that that was her business back in Poland. After the Polish wave the rest of Eastern Europe followed. In every case seasonal work and gang work provided a useful source of labour to both them and local agriculture.
However, it is my opinion that it was and is no better managed than in the 1840’s and still prone to much abuse. Legislation has been passed and circumvented. But perhaps there is more good than bad as good people do not need legislation.
I give three illustrations of abuse of the system:
In the late 1990’s I was walking to work early one morning to catch the train in Spalding to go on a course when I came across a young Polish lady who had clearly been sleeping on a bench. I asked if she was OK. She explained that she had paid a fee to an agency to get work in Spalding with accommodation only to arrive at her own expense and find out the agency was fake. She was running low on money, so I gave her enough for the bus fair to go to an address of a gangmaster I knew and tell him that he could speak to me the next day, but he would hopefully provide accommodation and work. I phoned him the following day and he confirmed he was able to help her. The gang system is prone to fraud when dealing with migrants.
In March 2018 and I stop by the side of the road near Cowbit as the verge is blocked by parked cars and a swarm of about 100 pickers are on a relatively small field. I call out to a guy that I recognise because he lives near me and ask him what is happening. He explains that there are far too many people for a field of this size, but all the agency cares about is cropping for as many farmers as possible (market share) as quickly as possible and disregards the need for him to have a full day’s productive work to make his day worthwhile. He said it was his last year of coming here as it was not worth his while to pick flowers. He explained that he no longer trusted farm work and would look for better work in a factory. I find it ironic that almost identical abuse of the gang system is identified in the 1867 report. Indeed in March 2020 I witnessed a similar occurrence on the A16 Spalding bypass. In this case it was a horrendously wet March, but as I looked across the field I counted over 80 flower pickers. I walked around the field and chatted to a couple of young ladies on the edge of the field. Because of the wet weather the window for picking flowers was tiny. This resulted in them having little work, but when work appeared loads were called in resulting in an hour or two’s work for many rather than a full day’s work for a few. It barely covered the cost of getting to the field and they were truly fed up with this treatment.
In December 2019 my daughter is doing indoor archery at Spalding Grammar School and I decided to walk into town on this cold December night. I was horrified at the number of homeless people I encountered. Whilst they were homeless for various reasons a group of five taking shelter in an archway off The Crescent had a particular relevance. They looked a sorry state and I bought them some cigarettes to gain their confidence so that I could talk to them. They were illegal immigrants and as such dare not ask for help as in doing so they risked having to agree to detention and returning to their country of origin. They had been here for two years and enjoyed working in the fields with their accommodation provided by their employer. This accommodation varied from multi-occupancy housing to outbuildings and sheds. I asked them to describe the sort of work they did and where they worked. It is clear that some of their employment was local to Spalding on local farms and pack houses. However, wet weather had resulted in work disappearing, and with it their accommodation. Their former boss had also vanished and they were stuck with no work, no money, no shelter, nowhere to live. Whilst not directly responsible it is a failure of the food and farming industry that this had happened. I am sure some of the farms they had worked at will have supplied to large companies with clear anti-slavery policies and will have appropriate certification. However, it is a fact that bad people circumvent rules and agencies short of workers will subcontract from less reputable sources and thus we see the degradation and abuse of the gang labour system that feeds off a black economy containing vulnerable people.
It is telling that in 1867 the gang system was widely disliked and a preference was to avoid it, but at the same time it was deemed essential to enable the Fenland agricultural system to function and a 155 years later we see a similar predicament, albeit with a different set of causes and problems. Perhaps it’s a sad fact that each generation has its poor and abused and for each generation their stories are different.
Yet we should balance this in that I have also witnessed great kindness and good actions by Fenland farmers and employers for we should remember to quote Marc Anthony in Julius Caesar that “the ills that men do live after them. The good is oft interred in their bones.”
[i] Commission Report into Employment of Children Young Persons and Women 1867 page 74
[ii] Bury and Norwich Post 4th Sept 1900
[iii] Boston Guardian 1929
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