Community Connections – George Mann’s international Labor Day musical tour

George Mann is the musician we want to hear on Labor Day!

(See Local musician George Mann to release ‘Labor Day’ album

By Marjorie Olds, August 7, 2024, https://tompkinsweekly.com/articles/local-musician-george-mann-to-release-labor-day-album/)

And this year George has new transatlantic stories of music and labor organizing from abroad. On July 9^th George flew to London to play 3 concerts, including performing at the Ropemakers Pub, some house concerts, and making  music with British folk singer Robb Johnson (“one of the last genuinely political songwriters”).

From London, George headed to Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, about 100 miles southwest of London. This musical festival honors six impoverished farm workers convicted in 1834 of Conspiracy to Fix Prices for promoting a fair living wage, and the first effort to unionize British farmworkers. The farmers were sentenced to 7 years’ hard labor, to be served in Australia, for trying to form a trade union. The leader wrote from prison, “We raise the watchword, liberty. We will, we will, we will be free!”

George recounts that 800,000 Britons signed a petition against this injustice and demonstrated in the streets to protest this unfair trial and inhumane sentence. Many in those days did not survive the journey to Australia or later succumbed from the inhumane treatment in the forced labor prison camps. The public’s outrage, the petition, and demonstrations in the streets led the British Parliament to commute the sentence two years later. 

The festival began in 1934, the 100th anniversary of these events, with a march to the grave of one of the TolPuddle Martyrs, James Hammett, who is buried there. The other five left England for Canada and lived out their lives there. 

The festival runs for three days, with labor culture and political discussions interwoven throughout the festivities and music going round the clock. Terrific that this year the British performers and audience will have our musical emissary from Ithaca to bring news of the political challenges and solutions from this side of the Atlantic. 

The festival website describes George’s invitation to the Festival:

“A former union organiser and activist based in Ithaca, New York, George Mann sings songs from the last century of the labour and social justice movements, and his own songs are powerful and funny takes on the state of the United States. His concerts are part sing-along, part history lesson, and he can make you shout for joy, send chills down your spine, or bring tears to your eyes in the same set.”

George was honored to be invited to perform, and a transatlantic partnership helped make it possible. A Community Arts Partnership grant selected George for a grant that would pay most of his travel costs, while expanding the U.S.-U.K. musical link. Once this generous CAP grant made George’s trip possible, the Festival was the anchor for his tour and George was able to book additional concerts.

After performing at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, George traveled to Liverpool to visit the home of the Beatles— strolling the streets of Liverpool and taking in The Cavern Club, where The Beatles performed before making it famous, and where musicians still perform to this day.

Flying out of the John Lennon Airport, George spent a night in Dublin, Ireland, before heading to Cork to perform in the “Spirit of Mother Jones Festival,” honoring one of our nation’s most famous labor activists, who was born in Cork. After moving to the U.S. and living as a fairly conventional homemaker and mother, Mary Harris Jones experienced such tragic challenges to the working poor that she grew to become a powerful labor organizer with the United Mine Workers. She lost her husband and four children to the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1867, then her home and dress shop burned down in the Chicago Fire of 1871.

Fighting for recognition of the dangers and terrible toll of child labor, in 1903 she brought a large band of children, permanently disabled from injuries suffered while working in factories and mills, to Teddy Roosevelt’s home to urge him to support laws restricting child labor. They had marched 100 miles from Philadelphia to Long Island, but Roosevelt refused to meet with the little children, led by “the most dangerous woman in America,” who was in her 80’s at the time. George, unlike Teddy Roosevelt, paid homage to Mother Jones at her birthplace and performed at the festival honoring her.

For George, this trip was the culmination of decades combining his love of music with his concern for organized labor, and writing about the link thereof. Si Kahn (now 81) and George’s “Labor Day” CD has been celebrated since its launch on Labor Day, 2024, and will be heard again as Labor Day approaches. For now, he is back in Ithaca with new memories and concerts behind him.

You can find George’s music at his website, www.georgemannmusic.com