The Tolpuddle Martyrs: injustice within the law, by Herbert Vere Evatt with a new introduction by Geoffrey Robertson.

The legend of the six rural labourers who were transported to Australia in 1834 for swearing an oath of solidarity is celebrated as the foundation of the modern trade union movement. In his introduction to this new edition of Doc Evatt’s brilliant account, Geoffrey Robertson QC notes that the case stood for something different, and something very frightening: that oppression and cruelty do not always fail. Indeed, they sometimes succeed beyond the hopes of the oppressors. The labourers suffered no violence ‘save the extreme and horrible violence of the law itself’. The true lesson from the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs is that societies need guarantees to prevent ‘injustice within the law’. The Tolpuddle Martyrs inspired Doc Evatt’s support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Robertson argues that it should inspire the Australian government to legislate for a bill of rights today.

In association with Sydney University Press, the Evatt Foundation published this new edition of Doc Evatt’s 1937 classic to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the transportation of the six labourers to Australia and the 30th anniversary of the Evatt Foundation. The edition includes the original foreword by the ‘bushman bishop’, Ernest Henry Burgmann. It was launched by the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG in NSW Parliament House on  9 December 2009.

‘The Martyrs of Tolpuddle speak across the years of the price by which alone justice can be set up on the earth.’

– E. H. Burgmann (1937)

Evatt, Herbert Vere (2009), The Tolpuddle Martyrs: injustice within the law, Sydney University Press, Sydney, pbk, xxi+104 pp. RRP: $29.95. Our price: $24.99 (minus discount for Evatt members).

ISBN: 978-1920899493