Joseph Arch

Joseph Arch (10 November 1826 – 12 February 1919) was an English politician, born in Barford, Warwickshire who played a key role in unionising agricultural workers and in championing their welfare. Following their enfranchisement, he became a Member of Parliament.

Biography of an agricultural labourer

Joseph Arch came from a family that had lived in the Warwickshire village of Barford for three generations and had owned their own cottage there since the 18th century. He started work at the age of nine as a crow-scarer, working 12 hours a day. Afterwards he became a plough-boy, progressing to mastery of all-round skills, which enabled him to move around the Midlands and South Wales, earning a reasonable wage. At the same time he observed the terrible conditions in which the majority of agricultural labours lived. These were later described by the Countess of Warwick in the introduction she wrote to his autogiography.

Returning home, Arch married in 1847 and eventually had seven children. He also became a Primitive Methodist preacher but was discriminated against in the village by the parson and his wife, with whom his family had always been at odds. During this period he educated himself politically from old newspapers and became a supporter of Liberalism. It was therefore to him as a well-respected and experienced agricultural worker, that his destitute fellow workers eventually turned for help in their fight for a living wage. Called to address an initial meeting held on 7 February in the Stag's Head public house in Wellesbourne, Arch had been expecting an attendance of fewer than thirty. Instead, he found on his arrival that over 2,000 agricultural labourers from all the surrounding area had arrived to hear him speak. The meeting was therefore held under a large chestnut tree opposite on a dark, wet, winter night, with the labourers holding flickering lanterns on bean poles to illuminate the proceedings.