I WAS fortunate to be appointed as Unite’s regional secretary for the South West recently with the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs still fresh in my mind.

Those six Dorset farm workers got shipped off to Australia in 1834 for swearing an oath and trying to stick together over wages that barely kept them alive.

The court called it conspiracy. We call it basic solidarity now. Their story hits differently when stood in a Dorset field on the third weekend in July.

The people that organised and rallied to win their pardon saw the injustice, and with the Martyrs they grew this country’s trade union movement. Every day I see the spirit of that solidarity in our movement. Through strike fund donations, through the members on picket lines and through collective efforts which strengthen and invigorate our cause. This weekend we celebrate our movement and the spirit of solidarity that lives on with it.

The Martyrs came home after a pardon, but the lesson stuck. Workers get punished when they organise. Bosses and governments find ways to make it costly. That hasn’t changed much. You regularly hear of threats by employers to take work abroad if the shop floor won’t accept a below-inflation pay deal.

Care workers in Cornwall face emotional fatigue and unmanageable workloads. Farm labourers in the Channel Islands still face seasonal exploitation and dodgy accommodation. Craft workers for the council in Bristol face attacks on their terms and conditions. Tourism staff in places like Newquay and Bournemouth get zero-hour deals that leave them broke when the season ends.

We’re in the middle of it right now. Pay disputes in manufacturing, safety rows on construction sites, fights over outsourcing of staff in hospitals and care homes where people can’t do their job without burning out.

Unite isn’t some abstract cause. It’s the reps on the shop floor pushing back case by case, getting better deals on overtime, forcing proper risk assessments, dragging employers to the table when they try to cut corners.

The wins can be messy and partial, but they’re real. Every per cent fought for on pay makes a difference to working people’s living standards. Securing proper sick pay stops families going into debt when someone gets ill.

I’m proud to lead a region within Unite, focused on taking it back to the workplace instead of distant political theatre. No grand speeches that go nowhere. Just pressure on the employers who control the day-to-day conditions. It’s a position that makes sense to anyone who’s sat through a branch meeting where the main topic is “how do we stop them changing our shifts again?”

Back at the sites, with the workers, that’s where it lands. I’ve been out with reps in recent weeks talking to members who are fed up but not beaten. One aerospace fitter on the picket line told me: “They can replace the tools easier than they can replace what we know about these aircraft.” That’s the spirit the Martyrs had. Ordinary people who refused to accept that the boss always holds all the cards.

None of this should surprise anyone. The Martyrs faced transportation. Today it’s a quieter, more discreet, erosion through contracts and policies. But the answer stays the same. Get organised, talk to the person next to you in the line and hold the employer to account where it matters most: inside the gate. That’s where real change starts.

The fight today stays local and pragmatic. Better contracts, safer conditions, fairer shares. No slogans will fix it on their own, no government will rebalance power to the extent it is needed. It takes turning up, signing people on, holding the line when management pushes.

That grassroots foundation of worker power needs rebuilding as a priority, only then can we take that strength beyond the workplace and make the broader progress so desperately needed for workers.

Tolpuddle showed what happens when workers stand together. We’re still proving the same point, one workplace at a time, right here in the south-west.

Matt Allen is Unite regional secretary for the South West.