Tolpuddle Martyrs festival expects record-breaking crowd

Festival-goers arrive at Tolpuddle in Dorset: around 10,000 are expected this weekend. Photograph: Frank Baron

Most 11 year-old boys would probably be fiddling with a computer game or enjoying a kickabout with a football.

Not Ben Best. He can be found helping to hoist red flags and asking probing questions about the history of the trade union movement.

Wouldn't he rather be on the beach or the amusement arcade? "No, this is fun," says Ben. "It's a good atmosphere and there are lots of things to learn about. I've been to Glastonbury this year but this event is great too."

The event is the Tolpuddle Martyrs festival. Over this weekend around 10,000 people will meet on sloping fields in deepest Dorset to remember the farm labourers transported to Australia in 1834 for daring to form a trade union and to think about how they can make life better in the 21st century.

For the past decade or so the festival has grown steadily but this year the public sector cuts, the tuition fees issue and concerns about seismic global events appear to have prompted even more people to head to Tolpuddle.

The camping field was booked up weeks ahead for the first time ever and a record-breaking crowd is expected to turn out for the rally on Sunday that is central to the festival. They have even had to employ (very gentle) security staff to manage the event, though happily there is still no need for towering fences.

"We're expecting 600 tents in that little field," says Nigel Costley, regional secretary of the south west TUC and festival organiser. "God knows how we'll fit them in, but we will."

Some festivalgoers have been coming here for years, meeting up with old comrades to bemoan subjects such as the decline of socialism under New Labour or the problems of getting more younger people and women into senior trade union positions.

But Costley believes anger over the coalition's policies is creating a fresh energy and bringing in a new and often younger crowd. So relatively inexperienced campaigners against library cuts are rubbing shoulders with veteran CND activists and left-leaning campaigning politicians. There is also a greater focus on international events such as the Arab spring.

John Drake, chair of the south-west TUC and regional secretary for the Fire Brigades Union, is keen to talk to activists from groups such as UK Uncut and 38 Degrees about their techniques for campaigning and mobilising people. "This is a young, vibrant festival. In the tents at night you'll now find more young people than old, traditional trade union types. We want to make use of their knowledge," he says.

Drake's daughter, Ellie Drake, is one of those young people. Aged 17, she is a veteran of the student protests. "I think more of my friends are getting more interested in politics because we can see how the government's policies are affecting us," she says. Ellie is looking forward to the rally – and to seeing Billy Bragg, whom she grew up listening to thanks to her father.

It is a reminder that the modern incarnation of the gathering is about much more than earnest conversations and serious speeches.

By the late 1990s, the event, which has run since the 1930s at least, had come to feel a little tired. "Really it was just a rally on a Sunday afternoon that not many people attended," recalls Dick Muskett, a former soldier, factory worker and campaigner.

Muskett began booking musicians, playwrights and poets to give it more of a festival feel. Bragg is a regular but Muskett is this year also looking forward to seeing lesser-known artists such as Flapjack – who perform folk versions of music by artists from Metallica to Mozart – and Cosmo, whose music is described as a "mix of punk, folk, hip-hop, human beat-boxing, bluegrass and cow-punk".

Politics is never far away from the music, however. The most striking news story of the festival is that of 61-year-old retired teacher Maureen Lum, a member of the Tasmanian Grassroots Union choir, which is performing a folk opera based on the story of one of the martyrs, George Loveless.

Lum flew into Stansted airport earlier this month to enjoy a holiday culminating in an – unpaid – appearance at the festival, only to be told she needed an entertainment visit visa. She was searched and fingerprinted and sent back to Tasmania, a little like Loveless.

Following the intervention of politicians in the UK and Australia, Lum got the required visa and made it back in time. She says: "I'm glad I did. It wasn't nice to arrive in the UK and be treated as a criminal. It's good to come here and meet so many nice, gentle people."

Or as Swindon's community poet, Tony Hillier, pops up to turn the thought into verse: "An ethical cuddle is what you get at Tolpuddle."

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