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A beginner’s guide to the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival
If you plan on heading for this year’s Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, PETER FROST has some information for you

BRITAIN has given the world many valuable inventions. From Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope, Jethro Tull’s seed drill and John Harrison’s marine chronometer to Richard Trevithick’s steam engine and George Cayley’s first human-carrying heavier-than-air flying machine.

I could go on at some length with Michael Faraday’s electric motor, George Stephenson’s passenger railway, right up to John Logie Baird’s television until we reach Tommy Flower’s electronic programmable computer and Tim Berners-Lee’s world wide web.

But in the long battle for the advancement of the human condition none of them get near six Dorset farm workers who 185 years ago earned their place to be named among our country’s greatest inventors. They gave us, and the world, trade unions.

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