TUC General Secretary addressed the Tolpuddle crowd. He was all shirt sleeves and open collar: the union bureaucracy on their day off, clearly. His speech was presumably intended to sound left-wing: he demanded various things from the government, paid tribute to striking workers and talked about the trade unions fighting for their rights.

But it struck me that the exact same speech could have been made ten years ago. Indeed it probably was. Saying that you want the government to "put fairness at the heart of its programme" is only something you could say if you didn't know we'd had a Labour government for the last eleven years. A Labour government which has pretty systematically gone about doing the exact opposite.

Once again Tolpuddle is blessed with fantastic weather. And the trade unionosts of South West England (and beyond) turned out in their thousands to commemorate the Tolpuddle Martyrs and renew their commitment to the class struggle. Here they all are...

After eight miles and nearly three hours we're within sight (and sound) of the Martyr's Field. I can hear the dulcet tones of my own union General Secretary wafting out over the fields. But I can't quite make out what he's saying!

A little-known feature of the Tolpuddle festival has been an eight-mile "hike for freedom" organised by the Prison Officers' Association from Dorchester jail to the Tpuddle site - retracing in reverse the route taken by the original Tolpuddle martyrs.

So at 9 this morning about two dozen of us from the camp came over to Dorchester and began the two-hour walk back to the campsite. Hopefully by the time we get there Kate will have figured out how to get the tent down.

Good day: UNISON members in local government, together with their colleagues from Unite, have started their 48 hour strike in support of their demand for an above-inflation pay rise. Picket lines were impressive and positive at various Leicester City Council offices this morning, and even a short speech from me didn't dampen their mood at the lunchtime rally in Leicester's Town Hall Square.

I don't usually draw much attention to the blogs that get added to 4glengate's blogroll. They just appear, somewhere in the middle of the list, and I hope that readers find them interesting or useful. However, I've just found (via Grimmer Up North, for which thanks go towards Hebden Bridge) the blog of National Union of Journalists' General Secretary, Jeremy Dear.

Now I already knew Jeremy was a "good bloke", having heard him speak at several events over the last few years, but his blog is excellent - blending the "what I've been doing" stuff which from a Gen Sec can actually be interesting if it isn't just a list of his speeches and articles, with some assessment and comment. Despite being a trade unionist in the public eye, Dear is willing to discuss negotiation meetings he's been to, pass comment on current events and campaigns, and generally use the blog as a means of communicating with his union's members.

Livng outside of London, we are often quite cut off from the "left scene" which is very much centred on life in the capital. I hadn't even realised that Greg Tucker was ill and it came as a massive shock to hear a couple of days ago that he had died.

Now that I've got five minutes to write something by way of a tribute, I find that everything I would have written has already been said by others; people who knew him better or longer than I did.

Distracting himself from writing a report of Wednesday's UNISON NEC meeting, Jon Rogers has written a commentary on the current state of the trade unions in respect of equal pay - possibly the most important issue facing our unions, and their members, and one we are almost completely prevented from debating because of the fear that something someone says or writes might be used as evidence in litigation directed against the unions at a later stage.

It's a big problem, and one that I don't think the trade union rank and file activists have even begun to get a grip on. Since we can't ever talk about it, it is difficult to see a way out of the blind alley the unions have walked in to.