In 1834 six Dorset agricultural labourers, united together to - "preserve ourselves, our wives, and our children, from utter degradation and starvation".
News of their formation of the Tolpuddle Lodge of the Agricultural Labourers Friendly Society enraged the draconian local magistrate and landowner James Frampton who wrote to the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, to inform him that labourers were being induced to "enter into combinations of a dangerous and alarming kind, to which they are bound by oaths".
Although Trade Unions had been declared legal in England the six men were charged under the 1797 Mutiny Act and at their trial they were found guilty of administering illegal oaths. The judge unjustly sentenced them to seven years transportation to the penal colonies of Australia and Van Dieman�s Land (Tasmania).