THIS week marks some significant celebrations of rural class struggle. The wonderful rally at Burston marking “the longest strike in history” — the astonishing Burston School Strike from 1914 to 1939 — is to be followed by the Joseph Arch Walk in Warwickshire.

The Burston strike was led by the wonderful Kitty and Tom Higdon. Perhaps less well-known than the strike is Tom’s role as secretary of the Norfolk County Agricultural Workers Union up until 1938.

Nowadays our image of rural Britain is largely one of Countryfile and bucolic TV advertisements. It was Raymond Williams in his marvellous book The Country and the City who debunked the notion of rural life as simple, natural, and unadulterated, leaving us with an image of country life as if living in some kind of golden age.

This is, according to Williams, “a myth functioning as a memory” that dissimulates class conflict, enmity, and animosity that had been present in rural Britain since the 16th century.

Higdon was in the front rank of this rural class struggle. The NUAW (motto: “We sow the seed that feeds the world”) was the successor to Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, and it principally fought for improved wages for agricultural workers — most notably, in the great strike of 1923 which reversed the decline in agricultural wages after the first world war. The union was based in Norfolk but attracted support from around the country.

Arch was a great inspiration to Higdon. In 1909 Higdon made the trip to Barford where he was received warmly at his cottage by an 84-year-old Arch. Beer was brought from the kitchen and a jar of tobacco was placed on the table, as the two men talked.

Arch asked about the new labourers’ union in Norfolk, and what wages were like these days. “About 12 or 13 shillings a week,” replied Higdon. “Is that all!” exclaimed Arch, “Why, I got them up to 15, 16, or 17 shillings a week.”

There is no doubt that when the union went down wages went down with it. The discussion came around to the use of strike action. “What else can you do to get wages up?” thundered Arch.

Higdon went away having caught some of the power, the fervour, and the personality of Arch when he stood up in the countryside and stirred labourers to rise and combine. I like to think this was the spark for the post-war success of the Agricultural Workers Union.

This weekend we meet again to remember that fervour. Meeting at Wellesbourne at the place where Arch, in 1872, dressed in ordinary working clothes, a corduroy waistcoat, trousers and an old flannel jacket, stood on a pig-sticking stool to address, a meeting of farm workers. Expecting 30, some 600 turned up and the Agricultural Labourers Union was born.

We will then move on to Barford where Arch is buried, where at 2pm a wreath will be laid on his grave, this year by Matt Western, MP for Warwick and Leamington.

After, in St Peter’s Church, Martin Empson (author of Kill All The Gentlemen: Class Struggle and Change in Rural England, will be talking about the history of agricultural class struggle and Arch’s life.

It is not true that all the intelligence and cutting edge are always in the city — we can still learn a lot from those who undertook struggle in such inhospitable and challenging conditions.