How to get a vote

This is Rosedene, one of the best preserved Chartist cottages built as part of the National Land Programme in the 1840s.  This was a programme aimed at getting votes for Non-landowners by helping them become landowners.  The history of the movement was fascinating.  This little cottage in the Great Dodford Settlement in Worcestershire is now owned by the National Trust and opens on the first Sunday afternoon of each month in the summer for pre-booked guided tours for very small groups.  Today we went on a family outing on one of these tours.  The people who were granted these little homes also had four acres of land on which to become self-sufficient.  It was apparently not a very successful scheme, but fortunately, someone moved to save at least one of the cottages at the end of the 1990s.  Others of them can be seen in various stages of "redevelopment" around the village.

The extra is "the family".

I'm missing writing a poem...  I might have to do one later, or tomorrow...
Later:
Beewriter told me to write a poem...

For the Chartists and all those who fought to get us a vote


A way to right injustice...
Get everyone a vote.
To have a vote, you need some land
The Chartists will give you a hand.
With a small amount of money,
You could enter in the draw.
To be allocated a property, 
a house, some land, some hope.


So when you go to cast your vote,
or even think you won't,
then ponder on those
who had no chance
to say just what they thought
And take that slip
of paper slight
and put your cross so clear,
in that box of choice,
a choice dear bought,
for you...  and yours....  and me...  and mine...
your voice, your power, so slight, so strong,
a voice, a choice, take it, use it.

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