George Mitchell (trade unionist)
George Mitchell (6 February 1827 – 24 January 1901) was a British stonemason who helped grow the National Agricultural Labourers' Union (NALU). He was born in Montacute, Somerset, and began working at age five as a crow scarer. He later became a stonemason, followed his father into the trade, and moved to London to trade in marble, eventually becoming wealthy. Despite his wealth, he cared about the agricultural workers he had known in his youth and grew sympathetic to unions after meeting leaders who shared his Methodist faith.
Mitchell helped start the NALU’s Somerset District in June 1872 and wrote many letters and pamphlets in support of the union under the pen name "One From the Plough." In 1874 he published The Skeleton at the Plough: or the Poor Farm Labourers of the West, which included his autobiography. In 1877 he organized a mass meeting at Ham Hill that drew about 20,000 people; it became an annual event lasting until 1892.
As a trustee of the union, Mitchell donated large sums from his own money—about £20,000—which led to his bankruptcy. By 1884 he worried about how the union spent its funds and refused to let £6,000 of its reserves be used, angering the union’s president, Joseph Arch, who had Mitchell removed as a trustee. Mitchell also entered politics and was elected to the London School Board in 1882, representing Chelsea. In 1885 the union chose him as a prospective parliamentary candidate for South Somerset, but he did not stand.
By 1888 the union was in decline, and he called for an independent investigation into its finances. From 1890 to 1892 he led an effort to form a new union, the Somerset and West of England Farm Labourers’ Union, but it did not take hold. The rest of the 1890s saw him trying to rebuild his marble business. He died in early 1901 at his home in Shepherd’s Bush.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:07 (CET).