A FAIR Settlement

With her brother unfairly imprisoned, who could Dorcas turn to for help?

- Joanna Toye

While Joe stuffed himself with the cakes Albert had ordered, the young policeman explained – slowly and patiently – about a prisoner’s right of appeal.

Dorcas brightened at once. ‘So there is something that can be done! That’s wonderful!’

Albert grimaced. ‘Well, it’s not exactly straightforward. It takes time, and it would cost money.’ Dorcas’s shoulders slumped again. She had no money, and the Miners’ Welfare Fund was almost depleted. It had already paid out during the long weeks of the strike and had borne the high cost of defending the men in court.

‘It’s no good then,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, no,’ said Albert firmly, his eyes holding hers across the table. ‘We’re not giving up that easily.’

Dorcas nodded. Of course he did.

‘But when today’s verdict is reported in the papers,’ Albert went on, ‘I can’t believe there aren’t going to be plenty of trade unionists and reformers, and even just some concerned citizens, who will think it’s an outrage that the miners have been given a prison sentence. Especially since Edwin Kelsey…’ He said the name with almost the same amount of distaste Dorcas felt. ‘…Got off so lightly!’

Dorcas nodded again.

Blushing, she remembered the day Albert had appeared just in time to save her from being propositioned by the leering brute, and she knew Albert remembered it too.

‘And so…?’ she queried. ‘What we need to do now, Dorcas, is to pull all those different people together.’

He’d said ‘we’ again! But Dorcas was bemused. He was talking about people, and things, way beyond her ken.

‘How?’ she asked. ‘If I’m right, you’re talking about people not just round here, not just in Somerset, not just in the south west, but anywhere! All over the country!’

‘That’s right,’ grinned Albert. ‘All over the world maybe!’

‘But… what? How on earth do we do that?’