Today in Labor History June 11, 1381: Wat Tyler’s Rebellion was going strong. Tyler led a Peasant revolt in England, from May to June 15, 1381. The uprising began in response to a new poll tax. However, Tyler called for property to be held in common and equality for all. The peasants also wanted the right to choose their employer, rather than to be tied to a specific landlord. The rebellion contributed to the end of serfdom.

Tyler’s Rebellion has been referenced in many works of music and literature. He is the protagonist in Pierce Egan the Younger's novel “Wat Tyler, or the Rebellion of 1381 (1841),” a radical text published as a propaganda piece during the Chartist movement, as an argument for a republican government. Charles Dickens invokes Wat Tyler’s name in “Bleak House” (1853). Tyler also appears as a sympathetic hero in “A Dream of John Ball” (1888) by the socialist writer William Morris. And he appears in Melville’s “Redburn” and in Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.”

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #WatTyler #rebellion #peasant #revolt #landlord #england #literature #fiction #writer #author #socialism #melville #MarkTwain #Dickens @bookstadon

Today in Labor History May 30, 1381: Tax collector John Bampton sparked the Peasants’ Revolt in Brentwood, Essex. The mass uprising, also known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, or the Great Rising, began because of attempts to collect a poll tax. However, tensions were already high because of the economic misery and hunger caused by the Black Death pandemic of the 1340s, and the Hundred Years’ War. During the uprising, rebels burned public records and freed prisoners. King Richard II, 14 years old, hid in the Tower of London. Rebels entered the Tower and killed the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, but not the king. It took nearly six months for the authorities to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt. They slaughtered over 1,400 rebels. Roughly 600 years later, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried again to impose a poll tax on Britain’s working class. It also sparked a revolt which brought an end both to the tax and Thatcher’s regime.

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #peasant #revolt #rebellion #PollTax #thatcher #WatTyler #pandemic #plague #massacre #execution

642 years ago today, on 30th May 1381, the #PeasantRevolt started. My daughter learned about it at school recently (impressed they did this! Not sure whether it's part of the national curriculum?). I ended up watching this Tony Robinson documentary and thoroughly enjoyed it. What fantastic courage and organisation by #WatTyler and all #Revolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kq9sbtFCR8

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" #WatTyler https://youtu.be/kBvs30TLdvI