Salt and Satyagrahi

How often when we use salt on our food and our roads do we stop to think of its origins and  history, well one woman  in India is doing that right now.  Her name is Jill Beckingham who is the wife of the British deputy high commissioner in Mumbai.

During the early hours of 18th November she started a 17 day 357 km walk from Ahmedabad to Dandi beach, Surat,  on the coast of Gujarat. Her fund raising walk is under the 'India UK Friendship' banner, the proceeds will be going to 6 NGO's (non-governmental organisations) and will be split between three in Ahmedabad and three in Mumbai.  She will walk 25kms each day and there will be three rest days during this period.

Jill Beckingham will be retracing the historic steps of Gandhi when he set off from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad on March 12th 1930.   This march was done to protest against the salt laws imposed by the British as well as colonial rule.

As with everything Gandhi did the protest was done by non-violent means and he was originally accompanied by some 78 male 'satyagrahi's' (activist's of truth and resolution).  The 24 day walk ended on April 5th.  All along the route crowds gathered to watch  him pass through their villages as they watered the route and threw fresh vegetation onto the path before him. Many villagers joined him swelling the group along the way.

On reaching the coast Gandhi bent down and scooped up a  handful of salt, so breaking the law, within seconds many of his followers repeated this passive defiance.  The Salt Tax made it illegal to either sell or produce salt, allowing complete British monopoly.  Equally the law made it illegal for people to collect salt for their own use from the coast ensuring they had to buy it . which many of them could ill afford.

Gandhi was to be arrested a month later but his resolve to free India from British rule never wavered and as history now tells us India did eventually gain independence. Jill Beckingham's walk is being done in a spirit of friendship and to raise money for the poor. 

Ladies of the Land

It seems perfectly fitting on this Armistice Day , to remember not only the men who suffered and made sacrifices during the war years,  but also the many thousands of  women who during both the First and the Second World Wars were called upon to work on the land.  They were known as the Women's Land Army (WLA).  They originally started to work in agriculture in 1915 and by 1917 there were some 260.000 women working on the land and on farms, digging and planting, ploughing and driving tractors.

                                                              (Photograph by dan)
In 1939 during the Second World War Britain needed to grow more food and the call went out again for women to work in agriculture.  Whilst many of the women and girls who volunteered were from the country up to a third of them came from London and industrial cities from the north of England. For many of these women the experience changed their lives forever not only in how they viewed themselves but also how the rest of society viewed them.

What is less well known is that  another  organisation known as the Womens's Timber Corps (WTC) was also formed.  They were known as 'Lumber Jills' and their origins also go back to the First World War. During 1940 in order to solve the problem of labour shortage, together with an increased demand for timber, the Forestry Commission started recruiting women to work in the forests and sawmills.

                                                                         (Photograph by dan)
Their work as with the Land Girls was tough, hard, dirty and ardous. They were put to felling trees, sewing them up, loading them and operating sawmills. With only a 4/6 week course before starting  work in the forests they nonetheless proved themselves to be more than capable of doing the work.  There was even a grudging acceptance of the fact that they were just as good as the men they had replaced.  They were paid anything from 35 to 46 shillings a week.    The WTC disbanded in 1946 and the women were recognised by receiving a personal letter from Queen Elizabeth.

Despite proving themselves on the land their work and contributions to the war effort went largely unrecognised for many years.  It was not until 2000 that they were allowed to take part in the annual Remembrance Sunday parade in London.  Later in October 2007 the Forestry Commission of Scotland unveiled a national memorial to the women of the WTC in the form of a life size bronze sculpture which can be seen in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, near Aberfoyle, Stirling.

In December 2007 the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recognised their work by  creating a badge of honour for the women of the Women's Timber Corps and the Women's Land Army and in July 2008 over 30,000 women received this honour.