Coroner & Legal
Tasmanian community choir member thrown out of UK
A member of a Tasmanian community choir was refused entry to the United Kingdom on Tuesday (July 5th) and deported because she was deemed to be trying to enter under false pretences – of being a tourist when she was an entertainer.
Maureen Lum was planning to sing in the back row of The Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir , in a one off, one hour, public performance for which there was no fee, during a four week holiday in the UK.
Ms Lum was detained on arrival from Australia, body searched, interviewed, refused leave to enter and sent home on the next vailable flight. She is due back in Hobart today.
She fell foul of the law when immigration officers at London’s Stanstead Airport ruled that she should have applied in advance for a visa as an entertainer.
Ms Lum travelled ahead of the July 16th performance by The Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir at the Tolpuddle Festival in Dorset. She rang choir founder and former Unions Tasmania secretary
Simon Cocker, while waiting for her flight back to tell him what had happened to her.
Mr Cocker told Crikey that she had sought a tourist visa on arrival.
Questioned about her visit by an immigration officer, she said she was going to sing at the Tolpuddle Festival. She was then told she was ineligible for a tourist visa, could not apply for an
entertainers’ visa at the point of entry, subjected to a body search and deported.
“It’s quite incredible that Maureen was deported,” said an angry Mr Cocker. “She was treated as if she was trying to sneak in and take up residence.”
Ms Lum is one of 34 choir members who raised the money to go to the annual festival, which commemorates a group local agricultural labourers who banded together nearly 200 years ago, to stand up for their rights.
Known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, several were transported to Botany Bay, while their leader, George Loveless, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land.
Mr Cocker researched his story and is co-author of a 60-minute folk opera, “Loveless in Hobart Town”, which the choir was invited to perform at the festival. The folk opera is a triumphant story against injustice and draconian laws used by those in power – whoever, wherever – against the vulnerable.
Public outcry and a storm of protest caused the King to pardon Loveless and he returned to England a free man.
Ms Lum’s ordeal will be raised in the House of Commons, at the behest of the British Trade Union Congress, by a key figure in the Labor Opposition. And Tasmanian Labor Senator Lisa Singh will raise it with the British High Commissioner in Canberra.
The Cameron Government changed the UK’s immigration laws in May and amateur performing groups were brought under new visa regulations for entertainers. A list of big festivals, such as the Glastonbury opera festival, was drawn up, for which amateurs could be given entertainers’ visas under certain conditions.
The small, union organized Tolpuddle Festival wasn’t on the list and choir members had no idea they could end up being sentenced to transportation back to Tasmania.
“Going to Tolpuddle is about a cultural celebration of our common history with unionists in the UK and we were very excited to be invited, ” said Mr Cocker, who is due to fly out with other choir
members this weekend.
“Maureen has been denied entry to the bloody country that we share a Queen with. We are all in shock at her harsh treatment.
“The decision may have been technically correct – as it was with George Loveless – but it was unreasonable and unjust .”
• The Background
By Margaretta Pos
Imagine the story of a journey from England to Tasmania of a man in chains and a return journey, nearly 200 years later, of a choir to sing his praises. Hard to believe? Well, it’s true.
It’s the story of George Loveless, who was transported for starting a trade union for agricultural labourers and The Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir, which will perform a folk opera – Loveless in Hobart Town – in his home village of Tolpuddle, in Dorset County.
Incredible as it sounds, a staggering 800,000 people signed a petition in 1834 in protest against a sentence of seven years transportation to Botany Bay, meted out to Loveless and five fellow farm workers. The petition was delivered to the British Home Secretary and an unprecedented 100,000 people marched through London in a massive demonstration of support.
The men came to be known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
They were charged under an old law, of uttering unlawful oaths when swearing allegiance and secrecy to their new union. But their real ‘crime’ was to have formed a trade union in protest against cuts to their paltry pay and to bargain for a better deal.
Four years before, in 1830, landowners felt threatened by rural riots, after which 19 people were executed and hundreds were gaoled or sentenced to transportation. When the local Tolpuddle squire and magistrate, James Frampton, got wind of a group of his farm workers banding together, he took action against them.
By chance, Loveless was separated from his colleagues and ended up in Van Diemen’s Land. He spent three years in VDL, before the mounting public outcry in England resulted in the men being pardoned by the King and able to return home.
It is a triumphant story against injustice and draconian laws used by the establishment – whoever, wherever – to stay in power: it is a story that has resonance across time and place. So much so, it inspired Simon Cocker to undertake research for a 60-minute folk opera, which had its premiere with the Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir at the Cygnet Folk Festival in January.
On July 16th, it will be a key event at the annual Tolpuddle Festival, which commemorates the martyrs’ history and celebrates their lives. Thirty-four choir members are going, including two now living in Sydney and one in New York – all paying their own airfares.
“We’re really excited to have been invited to the Tolpuddle Festival,” says Cocker.
A former Unions Tasmania secretary, Cocker started the choir ten years ago after a union dinner where he got talking to political singer/songwriter Peter Hicks – the choir is open to everyone and meets every Monday night. What sets it apart from other community choirs, however, is the focus on finding, researching, writing and singing songs based on the struggles of the working classes.
“ George Loveless is almost unknown in Tasmania, although a hero in England, but little was known about his time in Hobart,” says Cocker. “And it was festering away in my mind that the Hobart story needed to be told.”
The project was triggered when Tolpuddle Festival organiser Graham Moore visited Tasmania and the choir joined him at Cygnet in singing songs about the martyrs from his own folk opera. This led to six months of research by Cocker and Romy Winter, and after one initial song, Loveless in Hobart Town was completed.
Loveless spent much of his time while in exile working on the Government farm at New Town. When some of the cattle wandered, he was charged by Governor Arthur with negligence – one of numerous clashes he had with the colonial administration, even after he was finally pardoned.
There are ten songs in all, written by Cocker, Hicks, Mathew Woolley, Maureen Lum and Geoff Francis, with the script by Cocker. One existing song, by Ted Egan, is included while another, We Will Be Free, uses words written by Loveless himself when incarcerated. The songs were recorded on disk in 2010 and are available for purchase.
Loveless in Hobart Town isn’t just a one-dimensional story; it’s also a story about the anguish of Loveless, a deeply religious Methodist preacher and his wife Betsy, at their forced separation. Two songs, Betsy’s Song and Betsy Can You Hear Me Calling? switch the focus from the political to the personal.
“The rousing finale, There Will Be Freedom, is as relevant today as it was then,” Cocker says. “All around the world, the struggle continues for justice, for freedom from repression, freedom from starvation, and the struggle for a living wage.
“Tasmania has blotted out much of its nineteenth century history and the choir is dedicated to singing social justice songs, both old and new. And what better person to sing about, than the strong, loving, principled, fearless, George Loveless?”