THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
[1829-1842]
So far we have been mainly concerned with societies formed in
particular trades, nearly always confined to particular localities,
and known as institutions, associations, trade clubs, trade societies,
unions, and union societies. We have by anticipation applied the term
Trade Union to them in its modern sense; but in no case that we have
discovered did they call themselves so. It is in the leading articles
of the newspapers of 1830-4 that we first come upon references to
some great Power of Darkness vaguely described as “the Trades Union.”
We find, moreover, that there was in that day, as there has been
repeatedly since, an Old Unionism and a New Unionism, and that “the
Trades Union” represented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or
Trade Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction between a
Trade Union and a Trades Union is exactly that which the names imply.
A Trade Union is a combination of the members of one trade; a Trades
Union is a combination of different trades. “_The_ Trades Union,” the
bugbear of the _Times_ in 1834, means the ideal at which the Trades
Unionists aimed: that is, a complete union of all the workers in the
country in a single national Trades Union. The peculiar significance
of Trades Union as distinguished from Trade Union must be carefully
borne in mind throughout this chapter, as it has passed out of use and
occurs now only as a literary blunder. Our present unions of workers
in different though related trades are usually called Amalgamations or
Federations. But both Amalgamations and Federations, being definitely
limited to similar or related and interdependent trades, are in idea
essentially Trade Unions. The distinctive connotation of the term
Trades Union was the ideal of complete solidarity of all wage-workers
in “One Big Union”--that is to say, a single “universal” organisation.
It is the attempt, on the part of the Trade Union leaders, to form not
only national societies of particular trades, but also to include all
manual workers in one comprehensive organisation, that constitutes the
New Unionism of 1829-34.[207]
We are not altogether without information as to the genesis of the
idea. The first attempt at a General Trades Union of which we have
any record is that of the “Philanthropic Society” or “Philanthropic
Hercules” of 1818. This we hear of almost simultaneously in Manchester,
the Potteries and London, though it seems to have originated in
first-named town. A meeting of workmen of various trades, held at
Manchester in August 1818, convinced of the impotence of isolated
Trade Clubs, sought to establish a society on a federal basis, each
constituent trade raising its own funds and separately moving for
advances or resisting reductions; but pledged first to consult the
committee and the other trades, and promised the support of all,
both in approved trade movements and in case of legal prosecution or
oppression. A committee of eleven was to be chosen by ballot, one-third
retiring monthly by rotation; and was to be assisted by a similar local
organisation in each town.[208] How far the “General Union,” as the
“Philanthropic Society” seems also to have been called, got under way
in Lancashire or Staffordshire remains uncertain; but in London the
idea was taken up by one of the ablest Trade Unionists of the time--the
shipwright John Gast, whom we have already mentioned as an ally of
Francis Place, who became president and called upon “the general body
of mechanics” to subscribe a penny per week to a central fund for the
defence of their common interests.[209]
Whether anything came of the attempts at a General Union in 1818-19 we
have not discovered, but in all probability the project immediately
failed. Seven years later a similar effort met with no greater
success. “In 1826,” as we incidentally learn from a subsequent Labour
journal,[210] “a Trades Union was formed in Manchester, which extended
slightly to some of the surrounding districts, and embraced several
trades in each; but it expired before it was so much as known a large
majority of the operatives in the neighbourhood.”
What was aimed at is clear enough. It was being recommended to the
workmen by some of their intellectual advisers. An able pamphlet of
1827 tells them that “Against the competition of the underpaid of
surrounding trades, the ready remedy is a central union of all the
general unions of all the trades of the country. The remuneration of
all the different branches of artisans and mechanics in the country
might then be fixed at those rates which would leave such an equalised
remuneration to all as would take away any temptation from those in one
branch to transfer their skill in order to undersell the labour of the
well-remunerated in another branch: the Central Union fund being always
ready to assist the unemployed in any particular branch, when their own
local and general funds were exhausted; provided always their claims to
support were by the Central Union deemed to be just.”[211]
Experience seems to show that national organisation of particular
trades must precede the formation of any General Trades Union; and
it was in this way that the project now took form. In 1829 we see
renewed attempts at national organisation, in which the Lancashire
and Yorkshire textile and building operatives were pioneers. The year
1829, closing the long depression of trade which began in the autumn
of 1825, after the repeal of the Combination Laws, witnessed the
establishment of important national Unions in both industries, but that
of the Cotton-spinners claims precedence in respect of its more rapid
development.
The Cotton-spinners’ trade clubs of Lancashire date apparently from
1792, and they spread, within a generation, to thirty or forty towns,
remaining always strictly local organisations. In the early years of
the nineteenth century attempts had been made by the Glasgow Spinners
to unite the Lancashire and Scottish organisations in a national
association; but these attempts had not resulted in more than temporary
alliances in particular emergencies. The rapid improvement of spinning
machinery, and the enterprise of the Lancashire millowners, were, at
the date of the repeal of the Combination Laws, shifting the centre
of the trade from Glasgow to Manchester; and it was the Lancashire
Cotton-spinners who now took the lead in trade matters. The failure
of a disastrous six months’ strike in 1829 at Hyde, near Manchester,
led to the conviction that no local Union could succeed against a
combination of employers; and the spinners’ societies of England,
Scotland, and Ireland were therefore invited to send delegates to a
conference to be held at Ramsay, in the Isle of Man, in the month of
December 1829.
This delegate meeting, of which there is an excellent report,[212]
lasted for nearly a week. The proceedings were of a remarkably
temperate character, the discussions turning chiefly on the relative
advantages of one supreme executive to be established at Manchester,
and three co-equal national executives for England, Scotland, and
Ireland. No secrecy was attempted. John Doherty,[213] secretary
and leader of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central
executive; while Thomas Foster (a man of independent means who
attended the conference at his own expense) favoured a scheme of home
rule. Eventually a “Grand General Union of the United Kingdom” was
established, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national
committees. The union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the
women and girls being urged to form separate organisations, which were
to receive all the aid of the whole confederation in supporting them
to obtain “men’s prices.” The union was to promote local action for a
further legislative restriction of the hours of labour, to apply to all
persons under 21 years of age. Its income consisted of a contribution
of a penny per week per member, to be levied in addition to the
contribution to the local society. Doherty was general secretary, and
Foster and a certain Patrick McGowan were appointed to organise the
spinners throughout the United Kingdom.
The Boroughreeve and Constables of Manchester, on May 26, 1830,
wrote in alarm to Sir Robert Peel: “The combination of workmen, long
acknowledged a great evil, and one most difficult to counteract, has
recently assumed so formidable and systematic a shape in this district
that we feel it our duty to lay before you some of its most alarming
features.... A committee of delegates from the operative spinners of
the three Kingdoms have established an annual assembly in the Isle
of Man to direct the proceedings of the general body towards their
employers, the orders for which they promulgate to their respective
districts and subcommittees. To these orders the most implicit
deference is shown; and a weekly levy or rent of one penny per head
on each operative is cheerfully paid. This produces a large sum,
and is a powerful engine, and principally to support those who have
turned out against their employers, agreeable to the orders of the
committee, at the rate of ten shillings per week for each person. The
plan of a general turnout having been found to be impolitic, they have
employed it in detail, against particular individuals or districts,
who, attacked thus singly, are frequently compelled to submit to their
terms rather than to the ruin which would ensue to many by allowing
their machinery (in which their whole capital is invested) to stand
idle.”[214]
Whether this Cotton-spinners’ Federation, as we should call it, became
really representative of the three kingdoms does not appear. A second
general delegate meeting was held at Manchester in December 1830,
which intervened in the great spinners’ strike then in progress at
Ashton-under-Lyne. At this conference the constitution of 1829 was
re-enacted with some alterations. The three national executives were
apparently replaced by an executive council of three members elected
by the Manchester Society, to be reinforced at its monthly meetings by
two delegates chosen in turn by each of the neighbouring districts.
A general delegate meeting seems also to have been held, attended by
one delegate from each of the couple of scores of towns in which there
were local clubs.[215] Foster was appointed general secretary; and a
committee was ordered to draw up a general list of prices, for which
purpose one member in each mill was directed to send up a copy of the
list by which he was paid. Although another delegate meeting of this
“Grand General Union” was fixed for Whit Monday 1831 at Liverpool, no
further record of its existence can be traced. It is probable that the
attempt to include Scotland and Ireland proved a failure, and that the
union had dwindled into a federation of Lancashire societies, mainly
preoccupied in securing a legislative restriction of the hours of
labour.[216]
But the National Union of Cotton-spinners prepared the way for the
more ambitious project of the Trades Union. Doherty, who seems to have
resigned his official connection with the Cotton-spinners’ Union,
conceived the idea of a National Association, not of one trade alone,
but of all classes of wage-earners. Already in May 1829 we find him,
as Secretary of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, writing to acknowledge
a gift of ten pounds from the Liverpool Sailmakers, and expressing “a
hope that our joint efforts may eventually lead to a Grand General
Union of all trades throughout the United Kingdom.”[217] At his
instigation a meeting of delegates from twenty organised trades was
held at Manchester in February 1830, which ended in the establishment,
five months later, of the National Association for the Protection of
Labour. The express object of this society was to resist reductions,
but not to strike for advances. In an eloquent address to working
men of all trades, the new Association appealed to them to unite for
their own protection and in order to maintain “the harmony of society”
which is destroyed by their subjection. How is it, the Association
asks, that whilst everything else increases--knowledge, wealth,
civil and religious liberty, churches, madhouses, and prisons--the
circumstances of the working man become ever worse? “He, the sole
producer of food and raiment, is, it appears, destined to sink whilst
others rise.” To prevent this evil the Association is formed.[218]
Its constitution appears to have been largely borrowed from that
of the contemporary Cotton-spinners, which it resembled in being a
combination, not of directly enlisted individuals, but of existing
separate societies, each of which paid an entrance fee of a pound,
together with a shilling for each of its members, and contributed at
the rate of a penny per week per head of its membership. Doherty was
the first secretary, and the Association appears very soon to have
enrolled about 150 separate Unions, mostly in Lancashire, Cheshire,
Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester. The trades which joined were mainly
connected with the various textile industries--the cotton-spinners,
hosiery-workers, calico-printers, and silk-weavers taking a leading
part. The Association also included numerous societies of mechanics,
moulders, black-smiths, and many miscellaneous trades. The building
trades were scarcely represented--a fact to be accounted for by the
contemporary existence of the Builders’ Union hereafter described.
The list[219] of the receipts of the Association for the first nine
months of its existence includes payments amounting to £1866, a sum
which indicates a membership of between 10,000 and 20,000, spread over
the five counties already mentioned. A vigorous propaganda was carried
on throughout the northern and midland counties by its officials,
who succeeded in establishing a weekly paper, the _United Trades
Co-operative Journal_, which was presently brought to an end by the
intervention of the Commissioners of Stamps, who insisted on each
number bearing a fourpenny stamp.[220] Undeterred by this failure, the
committee undertook the more serious task of starting a sevenpenny
stamped weekly, and requested Francis Place to become the treasurer
of an accumulated fund. “The subscription,” writes Place to John Cam
Hobhouse, December 5, 1830, “extends from Birmingham to the Clyde; the
committee sits at Manchester; and the money collected amounts to about
£3000, and will, they tell me, shortly be as much as £5000, with which
sum, when raised, they propose to commence a weekly newspaper to be
called the _Voice of the People_.” Accordingly in January 1831 appeared
the first number of what proved to be an excellent weekly journal, the
object of which was declared to be “to unite the productive classes of
the community in one common bond of union.” Besides full weekly reports
of the committee meetings of the National Association at Manchester and
Nottingham, this newspaper, ably edited by John Doherty, gave great
attention to Radical politics, including the Repeal of the Union with
Ireland, and the progress of revolution on the Continent.[221]
From the reports published in the _Voice of the People_ we gather
that the first important action of the Association was in connection
with the almost continuous strikes of the cotton-spinners at
Ashton-under-Lyne, which flamed up into a sustained conflict on a large
scale, during which Ashton, a young millowner, was murdered by some
unknown person in the winter of 1830-31, in resistance to a new list
of prices arbitrarily imposed by the Association of Master Spinners in
Ashton, Dukinfield, and Stalybridge.[222] Considerable sums were raised
by way of levy for the support of the strike, the Nottingham trades
subscribing liberally. But the Association soon experienced a check. In
February 1831 a new secretary decamped with £100. This led a delegate
meeting at Nottingham, in April 1831, to decree that each Union should
retain in hand the money contributed by its own members. But the usual
failings of unions of various trades quickly showed themselves. The
refusal of the Lancashire branches to support the great Nottingham
strike which immediately ensued led to the defection of the Nottingham
members. Nevertheless the Association was spreading over new ground.
We hear of delegates from Lancashire inducing thousands of colliers
in Derbyshire to join, whilst other trades, and even the agricultural
labourers, were talking about it.[223] At the end of April a
delegate meeting at Bolton, representing nine thousand coalminers
of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Wales, resolved to join.
The Belfast trades applied for affiliation. In Leeds nine thousand
members were enrolled, chiefly among the woollen-workers. Missionaries
were sent to organise the Staffordshire potters; and a National
Potters’ Union, extending throughout the country, was established
and affiliated. All this activity lends a certain credibility to the
assertion, made in various quarters, that the Association numbered one
hundred thousand members, and that the _Voice of the People_, published
at 7d. weekly, enjoyed the then enormous circulation of thirty thousand.
Here at last we have substance given to the formidable idea of “the
Trades Union.” It was soon worked up by the newspapers to a pitch at
which it alarmed the employers, dismally excited the imaginations of
the middle class, and compelled the attention of the Government. But
there was no cause for apprehension. Lack of funds made the Association
little more than a name. Practically no trade action is reported in
such numbers of its organ as are still extant. The business of the
Manchester Committee seems to have been confined to the promotion of
the “Short Time Bill.” On April 23, 1831, at the general meeting of
the Association, then designated the Lancashire Trades Unions, it was
resolved to prepare petitions in favour of extending this measure to
all trades and all classes of workers. Active support was given in
the meantime to Mr. Sadler’s Factory Bill. Towards the end of the
year we suddenly lose all trace of the National Association for the
Protection of Labour, as far as Manchester is concerned. “After it had
extended about a hundred miles round this town,” writes a working-class
newspaper of 1832, “a fatality came upon it that almost threatened
its extinction.... But though it declined in Manchester it spread and
flourished in other places; and we rejoice to say that the resolute
example set by Yorkshire and other places is likely once more to revive
the drooping energies of those trades who had the honour of originating
and establishing the Association.”[224]
What the fatality was that extinguished the Association in Manchester
is not stated; but Doherty, to whose organising ability its initial
success had been due, evidently quarrelled with the executive
committee, and the _Voice of the People_ ceased to appear. In its place
we find Doherty issuing, from January 1832, the _Poor Man’s Advocate_,
and vainly striving, in face of the “spirit” of “jealousy and faction,”
to build up the Yorkshire branches of the Association into a national
organisation, with its headquarters in London. After the middle of 1832
we hear no more, either of the Association itself or of Doherty’s more
ambitious projects concerning it.[225]
The place of the National Association was soon filled by other
contemporary general trade societies, of which the first and most
important was the Builders’ Union, or the General Trades Union, as it
was sometimes termed. It consisted of the separate organisations of the
seven building trades, viz. joiners, masons, bricklayers, plasterers,
plumbers, painters, and builders’ labourers, and is, so far as we know,
the solitary example, prior to the present century, in the history
of those trades of a federal union embracing all classes of building
operatives, and purporting to extend over the whole country.[226]
The Grand Rules of the Builders’ Union set forth an elaborate
constitution in which it was attempted to combine a local and trade
autonomy of separate lodges with a centralised authority for defensive
and aggressive purposes. The rules inform us that “the object of this
society shall be to advance and equalise the price of labour in every
branch of the trade we admit into this society.” Each lodge shall be
“governed by its own password and sign, masons to themselves, and
joiners to themselves, and so on;” and it is ordered that “no lodge be
opened by any other lodge that is not the same trade of that lodge
that, opens them, that masons open masons, and joiners open joiners,
and so on;” moreover, “no other member [is] to visit a lodge that is
not the same trade unless he is particularly requested.” Each trade had
its own bye-laws; but these were subject to the general rules adopted
at an annual delegate meeting. This annual conference of the “Grand
Lodge Delegates,” better known as the “Builders’ Parliament,” consisted
of one representative of each lodge, and was the supreme legislative
authority, altering rules, deciding on general questions of policy, and
electing the president and other officials. The local lodges, though
directly represented at the annual meetings, had had apparently little
connection in the interim with the seat of government. The society
was divided into geographical districts, the lodges in each district
sending delegates to quarterly district meetings, which elected a
grand master, deputy grand master, and corresponding secretary for
the district, and decided which should be the “divisional lodge,”
or district executive centre. These divisional lodges or provincial
centres were, according to the rules, to serve in turn as the grand
lodge or executive centre for the whole society. Whether the members
of the general committee were chosen by the general lodge or by the
whole society is not clear; but they formed, with the president and
general corresponding secretary, the national executive. The expenses
of this executive and of the annual delegate meeting were levied on
the whole society, each lodge sending monthly returns of its members
and a summary of its finances to the general secretary. The main
business of the national executive was to determine the trade policy
of the Associations, and to grant or withhold permission to strike.
As no mention is made of friendly benefits, we may conclude that the
Builders’ Union, like most of the national or general Unions of this
militant time, confined itself exclusively to defending its members
against their employers.
The operative builders did not rest content with an elaborate
constitution and code. There was also a ritual. The Stonemasons’
Society has preserved among its records a MS. copy of a “Making Parts
Book,” ordered to be used by all lodges of the Builders’ Union on the
admission of members. Under the Combination Laws oaths of secrecy and
obedience were customary in the more secret and turbulent Trade Unions,
notably that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland
Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders’
Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the
lodge--the “outside and inside tylers,” the “warden,” the “president,”
“secretary,” and “principal conductor”--and taken part in by the
candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening prayer,
and religious hymns sung at intervals, these “initiation parts”
consisted of questions and responses by the _dramatis personæ_ in
quaint doggerel, and were brought to a close by the new members taking
a solemn oath of loyalty and secrecy. Officers clothed in surplices,
inner chambers into which the candidates were admitted blindfolded,
a skeleton, drawn sword, battle-axes, and other mystic “properties”
enhanced the sensational solemnity of this fantastic performance.[227]
Ceremonies of this kind, including what were described to the Home
Office as “oaths of a most execrable nature,”[228] were adopted by
all the national and general Unions of the time: thus we find items
for “washing surplices” appearing in the accounts of various lodges
of contemporary societies. Although in the majority of cases the
ritual was no doubt as harmless as that of the Freemasons or the
Oddfellows, yet the excitement and sensation of the proceedings may
have predisposed lightheaded fanatical members, in times of industrial
conflict, to violent acts in the interest of the Association. At all
events, the references to its mock terrors in the capitalist press seem
to have effectually scared the governing classes.
The first years of the Builders’ Union, apparently, were devoted to
organisation. During 1832 it rapidly spread through the Lancashire and
Midland towns; and at the beginning of the following year a combined
attack was made upon the Liverpool employers. The ostensible grievance
of the men was the interference of the “contractor,” who, supplanting
the master mason, master carpenter, etc., undertook the management of
all building operations. A placard issued by the Liverpool Painters
announces that they have joined “the General Union of the Artisans
employed in the process of building,” in order to put down “that
baneful, unjust, and ruinous system of monopolising the hard-earned
profits of another man’s business, called ‘contracting,’” Naturally,
the little masters were not friendly to the contracting system; and
most of them agreed with the men’s demand that its introduction should
be resisted. Encouraged by this support, the several branches of the
building trade in Liverpool simultaneously sent in identical claims
for a uniform rate of wages for each class of operatives, a limitation
of apprentices, the prohibition of machinery and piecework, and other
requirements special to each branch of the trade. These demands were
communicated to the employers in letters couched in dictatorial and
even insulting terms, and were coupled with a claim to be paid wages
for any time they might lose by striking to enforce their orders. “We
consider,” said one of these letters, “that as you have not treated
our rules with that deference you ought to have done, we consider
you highly culpable and deserving of being severely chastised.” And
“further,” says another, “that each and every one in such strike shall
be paid by you the sum of four shillings per day for every day you
refuse to comply.”[229]
This sort of language brought the employers of all classes into line.
At a meeting held in June 1833 they decided not only to refuse all
the men’s demands, but to make a deliberate attempt to extinguish
the Union. For this purpose they publicly declared that henceforth
no man need apply for work unless he was prepared to sign a formal
renunciation of the Trades Union and all its works. The insistence
on this formal renunciation, henceforth to be famous in Trade Union
records as the “presentation of the document,” exasperated the
Builders’ Union. The Liverpool demands were repeated in Manchester,
where the employers adopted the same tactics as at Liverpool.[230]
In the very heat of the battle (September 1833) the Builders’ Union
held its annual delegate meeting at Manchester. It lasted six days;
cost, it is said, over £3000; and was attended by two hundred and
seventy delegates, representing thirty thousand operatives. This
session of the “Builders’ Parliament” attracted universal attention.
Robert Owen addressed the Conference at great length, confiding to it
his “great secret” “that labour is the source of all wealth,” and that
wealth can be retained in the hands of the producers by a universal
compact among the productive classes. It was decided, perhaps under his
influence, to build central offices at Birmingham, which should also
serve as an educational establishment. The design for this “Builders’
Gild Hall,” as it was termed, was made by Hansom, an architect who,
as an enthusiastic disciple of Owen, threw himself heartily into the
strike that was proceeding also in this town. It included, on paper,
a lecture-hall and various schoolrooms for the children of members.
The foundation-stone was laid with great ceremony on December 5, 1833,
when the Birmingham trades marched in procession to the site, and
enthusiastic speeches were made.[231]
We learn from the _Pioneer, or Trades Union Magazine_ (an unstamped
penny weekly newspaper published at first at Birmingham, at that time
the organ of the Builders’ Union[232]), the ardent faith and the vast
pretensions of these New Unionists. “A union founded on right and just
principles,” wrote the editor in the first number, “is all that is now
required to put poverty and the fear of it for ever out of society.”
“The vaunted power of capital will now be put to the test: we shall
soon discover its worthlessness when deprived of your labour. Labour
prolific of wealth will readily command the purchase of the soil; and
at a very early period we shall find the idle possessor compelled to
ask of you to release him from his worthless holding.” Elaborate plans
were propounded for the undertaking of all the building of the country
by a Grand National Gild of Builders: each lodge to elect a foreman;
and the foremen to elect a general superintendent. The disappointment
of these high hopes was rude and rapid. The Lancashire societies
demurred to the centralisation which had been voted by the delegate
meeting in September at the instigation of the Midland societies. Two
great strikes at Liverpool and Manchester ended towards the close of
the year in total failure. The Builders’ Gild Hall was abandoned;[233]
and the _Pioneer_ moved to London, where it became the organ of another
body, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, with which the
south country and metropolitan branches of the building trade had
already preferred to affiliate themselves. Nevertheless the Builders’
Union retained its hold upon the northern counties during the early
months of 1834, and held another “parliament” at Birmingham in April,
at which Scotch and Irish representatives were present.[234]
The aggressive activity and rapid growth of the Builders’ Union
during 1832-33 had been only a part of a general upheaval in labour
organisation. The Cotton-spinners had recovered from the failure of the
Ashton strike (1830-31) by the autumn of 1833, when we find Doherty
prosecuting with his usual vigour the agitation for an eight hours day
which had been set on foot by his Society for National Regeneration.
“The plan is,” writes J. Fielden (M.P. for Oldham) to William Cobbett,
“that about the 1st March next, the day the said Bill (now Act) limits
the time of work for children under eleven years of age to eight hours
a day, those above that age, both grown persons and adults, should
insist on eight hours a day being the maximum of time for them to
labour; and their present weekly wages for sixty-nine hours a week
to be the minimum weekly wages for forty-eight hours a week after
that time”; and he proceeds to explain that the Cotton-spinners had
adopted this idea of securing shorter hours by a strike rather than
by legislation on Lord Althorpe’s suggestion that they should “make a
short-time bill for themselves.”[235] Fielden and Robert Owen served,
with Doherty, on the committee of this society, which included a few
employers. The Lancashire textile trades followed the lead of the
Cotton-spinners, and prepared for a “universal” strike. Meanwhile
their Yorkshire brethren were already engaged in an embittered struggle
with their employers. The Leeds Clothiers’ Union, established about
1831, and apparently one of the constituent societies of the National
Association for the Protection of Labour, bore a striking resemblance
to the Builders’ Union, not only in ceremonial and constitution, but
also in its policy and history.[236] In the spring of 1833 it made a
series of attacks on particular establishments with the double aim of
forcing all the workers to join the Union and of obtaining a uniform
scale of prices. These demands were met with the usual weapon. The
employers entered into what was called “the Manufacturers’ Bond,” by
which they bound themselves under penalty to refuse employment to
all members of the Union. The men indignantly refused to abandon the
society; and a lock-out ensued which lasted some months, and was the
occasion of repeated leading articles in the _Times_.[237]
The Potters’ Union (also established by Doherty in 1830) numbered,
in the autumn of 1833, eight thousand members, of whom six thousand
belonged to Staffordshire and the remainder to the lodges at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, Derby, Bristol, and Swinton[238]--another instance
of the extraordinary growth of Trade Unions during these years.
How far these and other societies were joined together in any federal
body is not clear. The panic-stricken references in the capitalist
press to “the Trades Union,” and the vague mention in working-class
newspapers of the affiliation of particular societies to larger
organisations, lead us to believe that during the year 1833 there was
more than one attempt to form a “General Union of All Trades.” The
Owenite newspapers, towards the end of 1833, are full of references
to the formation of a “General Union of the Productive Classes.” What
manner of association Owen himself contemplated may be learnt from his
speech to the Congress of Owenite Societies in London on the 6th of
October. “I will now give you,” said he, “a short outline of the great
changes which are in contemplation, and which shall come suddenly upon
society like a thief in the night.... It is intended that national
arrangements shall be formed to include all the working classes in the
great organisation, and that each department shall become acquainted
with what is going on in other departments; that all individual
competition is to cease; that all manufactures are to be carried on
by National Companies.... All trades shall first form Associations of
lodges to consist of a convenient number for carrying on the business:
... all individuals of the specific craft shall become members.”[239]
Immediately after this we find in existence a “Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union,” in the establishment and extraordinary
growth of which the project of “the Trades Union” may be said to have
culminated. This organisation seems to have actually started in January
1834. Owen was its chief recruiter and propagandist. During the next
few months his activity was incessant; and lodges were affiliated all
over the country. Innumerable local trade clubs were absorbed. Early
in February 1834 a special delegate meeting was held at Owen’s London
Institute in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, at which it was resolved
that the new body should take the form of a federation of separate
trade lodges, each lodge to be composed usually of members of one
trade, but with provision for “miscellaneous lodges” in places where
the numbers were small, and even for “female miscellaneous lodges.”
Each lodge retained its own funds, levies being made throughout the
whole order for strike purposes. The Conference urged each lodge
to provide sick, funeral, and superannuation benefits for its own
members; and proposals were adopted to lease land on which to employ
“turn-outs,” and to set up co-operative workshops. The initiation
rites and solemn oath, common to all the Unions of the period, were
apparently adopted.
Nothing in the annals of Unionism in this country at all approached
the rapidity of the growth which ensued.[240] Within a few weeks
the Union appears to have been joined by at least half a million
members, including tens of thousands of farm labourers and women.
This must have been in great measure due to the fact that, as no
discoverable regular contribution was exacted for central expenses,
the affiliation or absorption of existing organisations was very
easy. Still, the extension of new lodges in previously unorganised
trades and districts was enormous. Numerous missionary delegates,
duly equipped with all the paraphernalia required for the mystic
initiation rites, perambulated the country; and a positive mania for
Trade Unionism set in. In December 1833 we are told that “scarcely a
branch of trade exists in the West of Scotland that is not now in a
state of Union.”[241] The _Times_ reports that two delegates who went
to Hull enrolled in one evening a thousand men of various trades.[242]
At Exeter the two delegates were seized by the police, and found to
be furnished with “two wooden axes, two large cutlasses, two masks,
and two white garments or robes, a large figure of Death with the dart
and hourglass, a Bible and Testament.”[243] Shop-assistants on the one
hand, and journeymen chimney-sweeps on the other, were swept into the
vortex. The cabinetmakers of Belfast insisted on joining “the Trades
Union, or Friendly Society, which had for its object the unity of all
cabinetmakers in the three kingdoms.”[244] We hear of “Ploughmen’s
Unions” as far off as Perthshire,[245] and of a “Shearman’s Union”
at Dundee. And the then rural character of the Metropolitan suburbs
is quaintly brought home to us by the announcement of a union of the
“agricultural and other labourers” of Kensington, Walham Green, Fulham,
and Hammersmith. Nor were the women neglected. The “Grand Lodge of
Operative Bonnet Makers” vies in activity with the miscellaneous “Grand
Lodge of the Women of Great Britain and Ireland”; and the “Lodge of
Female Tailors” asks indignantly whether the “Tailors’ Order” is really
going to prohibit women from making waistcoats. Whether the Grand
National Consolidated Trades Union was responsible for the lodges of
“Female Gardeners” and “Ancient Virgins,” who afterwards distinguished
themselves in the riotous demand for an eight hours day at Oldham,[246]
is not clear.
How the business of this colossal federation was actually managed
we do not know.[247] Some kind of executive committee sat in London,
with four paid officers. The need for statesmanlike administration was
certainly great. The avowed policy of the federation was to inaugurate
a general expropriatory strike of all wage-earners throughout the
country, not “to condition with the master-producers of wealth and
knowledge for some paltry advance in the artificial money price in
exchange for their labour, health, liberty, natural enjoyment, and
life; but to ensure to every one the best cultivation of all their
faculties and the most advantageous exercise of all their powers.”
But from the very beginning of its career it found itself incessantly
involved in sectional disputes for small advances of wages and
reduction of hours. The mere joining of “the Trades Union” was often
made the occasion of the dismissal by the employers of all those who
would not sign the “document” abjuring all combinations. Thus the
accession of the Leicester Hosiers in November 1833 led to a disastrous
dispute, in which over 1300 men had to be supported. In Glasgow a
serious strike broke out among the building trades at a time when the
Calico-printers, Engineers, and Cabinetmakers were already struggling
with their employers. The most costly conflict, however, which the
Grand National found on its hands during the winter was that which
raged at Derby, where fifteen hundred men, women, and children had been
locked out by their employers for refusing to abandon the Union. The
“Derby turn-outs” were at first supported, like their fellow-victims
elsewhere, by contributions sent from the trade organisations in
various parts of the kingdom; but it soon became evident that without
systematic aid they would be compelled to give way. A levy of a
shilling per member was accordingly decreed by the Grand National
Executive in February 1834. Arrangements were made for obtaining
premises and machinery upon which to set a few of the strikers to work
on their own account. The struggle ended, after four months, in the
complete triumph of the employers, and the return of the operatives to
work.
The “Derby turn-out” was widely advertised by the newspapers, and
brought much odium on the Grand National. But the denunciation of
“the Trades Union” greatly increased when part of London was laid
in darkness by a strike of the gas-stokers. The men employed by
the different gas companies in the metropolis had been quietly
organising during the winter, with the intention of simultaneously
withdrawing from work if their demands were not acceded to. The
plot was discovered, and the companies succeeded in replacing their
Union workmen by others. But weeks elapsed before the new hands were
able completely to perform their work,[248] and early in March 1834
Westminster was for some days in partial darkness. Amid the storm of
obloquy caused by these disputes the Grand National suddenly found
itself in conflict with the law. The conviction of six Dorchester
labourers in March 1834 for the mere act of administering an oath, and
their sentence to seven years’ transportation, came like a thunderbolt
on the Trade Union world.
To understand such a barbarous sentence we must picture to ourselves
the effect on the minds of the Government and the propertied classes
of the menacing ideal of “the Trades Union,” brought home by the
aggressive policy of the Unions during the last four years. Already
in 1830 the formation of national and General Unions had excited
the attention of the Government. “When we first came into office in
November last,” writes Lord Melbourne, the Whig Home Secretary, to Sir
Herbert Taylor, “the Unions of trades in the North of England and in
other parts of the country for the purpose of raising wages, etc., and
the General Union for the same purpose, were pointed out to me by Sir
Robert Peel [the outgoing Tory Home Secretary] in a conversation I had
with him upon the then state of the country, as the most formidable
difficulty and danger with which we had to contend; and it struck me as
well as the rest of His Majesty’s servants in the same light.”[249]
To advise the Cabinet in this difficulty Lord Melbourne called in
Nassau Senior, who had just completed his first term of five years
as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and directed him to
prepare, in conjunction with a legal expert named Tomlinson, a report
on the situation and a plan of remedial legislation. This document
throws light both on the state of mind and on the practical judgement
of the trusted economist. The two commissioners appear to have made
no inquiries among workmen, and to have accepted implicitly every
statement, including hearsay gossip, offered by employers. The evidence
thus collected naturally led to a very unfavourable conclusion. It
produced, as the commissioners recite, “upon our minds the conviction
that if the innocent and laborious workman and his family are to be
left without protection against the cowardly ferocity by which he
is now assailed; if the manufacturer is to employ his capital and
the mechanist or chemist his ingenuity, only under the dictation of
his short-sighted and rapacious workmen, or his equally ignorant
and avaricious rivals; if a few agitators are to be allowed to
command a strike which first paralyses the industry of the peculiar
class of workpeople over whom they tyrannise, and then extends
itself in an increasing circle over the many thousands and tens of
thousands to whose labour the assistance of that peculiar class of
workpeople is essential;--that if all this is to be unpunished, and
to be almost sanctioned by the repeal of the laws by which it was
formerly punishable;--it is in vain to hope that we shall long retain
the industry, the skill, or the capital on which our manufacturing
superiority, and with that superiority our power and almost our
existence as a nation, depends.” They accordingly conclude with a
series of astounding proposals for the amendment of the law. The Act
of 1825 could not conveniently be openly repealed; but its mischievous
results were to be counteracted by drastic legislation. They
recommend that a law should be passed clearly reciting the common law
prohibitions of conspiracy and restraint of trade. The law should go
on to forbid, under severe penalties, “all attempts or solicitations,
combinations, subscriptions, and solicitations to combinations”
to threaten masters, to persuade blacklegs, or even simply to ask
workmen to join the Union.[250] Picketing, however peaceful, was to be
comprehensively forbidden and ruthlessly punished. Employers or their
assistants were to be authorised themselves to arrest men without
summons or warrant, and hale them before any justice of the peace. The
encouragement of combinations by masters was to be punished by heavy
pecuniary penalties, to be recovered by any common informer. “This,”
say the commissioners, “is as much as we should recommend in the first
instance. But if it should be proved that the evil of the combination
system cannot be subdued at a less price, ... _we must recommend the
experiment of confiscation_,”--confiscation, that is, of the “funds
subscribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks
or otherwise.”[251]
The Whig Government dared not submit either the report or the
proposals to a House of Commons pledged to the doctrines of Philosophic
Radicalism. “We considered much ourselves,” writes Lord Melbourne,[252]
“and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrangements of
these unions, their meetings, their communications, or their pecuniary
funds could be reached or in any way prevented by any new legal
provisions; but it appeared upon the whole impossible to do anything
effectual unless we proposed such measures as would have been a serious
infringement upon the constitutional liberties of the country, and to
which it would have been impossible to have obtained the consent of
Parliament.”
The King, however, had been greatly alarmed at the meeting of the
“Builders’ Parliament,” and pressed the Cabinet to take strong
measures.[253] Rotch, the member for Knaresborough, gave notice in
April 1834 of his intention to bring in a Bill designed to make
combinations of trades impossible--a measure which would have obtained
a large amount of support from the manufacturers.[254] The coal-owners
and ship-owners, the ironmasters, had all been pressing the Home
Secretary for legislation of this kind.
But although Lord Melbourne’s prudent caution saved the Unions from
drastic prohibitory laws, the Government lost no opportunity of showing
its hostility to the workmen’s combinations. When in August 1833 the
Yorkshire manufacturers presented a memorial on the subject of “the
Trades Union,” Lord Melbourne directed the answer to be returned that
“he considers it unnecessary to repeat the strong opinion entertained
by His Majesty’s Ministers of the criminal character and the evil
effects of the unions described in the Memorial,” adding that “no
doubt can be entertained that combinations for the purposes enumerated
are illegal conspiracies, and liable to be prosecuted as such at
common law.”[255] The employers scarcely needed this hint. Although
combination for the sole purpose of fixing hours or wages had ceased
to be illegal, it was possible to prosecute the workmen upon various
other pretexts. Sometimes, as in the case of some Lancashire miners in
1832, the Trade Unionists were indicted for illegal combination for
merely writing to their employers that a strike would take place.[256]
Sometimes the “molestation or obstruction” prohibited in the Act of
1825 was made to include the mere intimation of the men’s intention
to strike against the employment of non-unionists. In a remarkable
case at Wolverhampton in August 1835, four potters were imprisoned
for intimidation, solely upon evidence by the employers that they
had “advanced their prices in consequence of the interference of the
defendants, who acted as plenipotentiaries for the men,” without, as
was admitted, the use of even the mildest threat.[257] Picketing, even
of the most peaceful kind, was frequently severely punished under this
head, as four Southwark shoemakers found in 1832 to their cost.[258]
More generally the men on strike were proceeded against under the laws
relating to masters and servants, as in the case of seventeen tanners
at Bermondsey in February 1834, who were sentenced to imprisonment for
the offence of leaving their work unfinished.[259]
With the authorities in this temper, their alarm at the growth of the
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union may be imagined. A new legal
weapon was soon discovered. At the time of the mutiny at the Nore in
1797 an Act had been passed (37 Geo. III. c. 123) severely penalising
the administering of an oath by an unlawful society. In 1819, when
political sedition was rife, a measure prohibiting unlawful oaths had
formed one of the notorious “Six Acts.” In neither case were trade
combinations aimed at, though Lord Ellenborough, in an isolated
prosecution in 1802,[260] had held that an oath administered by a
committee of journeymen shearmen in Wiltshire came within the terms
of the earlier statute. It does not seem to have occurred to any one
to put the law in force against Trade Unions until the oath-bound
confederacy of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union began to
make headway even in the rural villages of the South of England.
The story of the trial and transportation of the Dorchester labourers
is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history.[261] The
agricultural labourers of the southern counties, oppressed by the
tacit combinations of the farmers and by the operation of the Corn
Laws, as well as exceptionally demoralised by the Old Poor Law, had
long been in a state of sullen despair. The specially hard times of
1829 had resulted in outbursts of machine-breaking, rick-burning, and
hunger riots, which had been put down in 1830 by the movement of troops
through the disturbed districts, and the appointment of a Special
Commission of Assize to try over 1000 prisoners, several of whom were
hung and hundreds transported. The whole wage-earning population of
these rural districts was effectually cowed.[262] With the improvement
of trade a general movement for higher wages seems to have been set
on foot. In 1832 we find the Duke of Wellington, as Lord-Lieutenant
of Hampshire, reporting to Lord Melbourne that more than half the
labourers in his county were contributing a penny per week to a network
of local societies affiliated, as he thought, to some National Union.
“The labourers said that they had received directions from the Union
not to take less than ten shillings, and that the Union would stand by
them.”[263] These societies, whatever may have been their constitution,
had apparently the effect of raising wages not only in Hampshire, but
also in the neighbouring counties. In the village of Tolpuddle, in
Dorsetshire, as George Loveless tells us, an agreement was made between
the farmers and the men, in the presence of the village parson, that
the wages should be those paid in other districts. This involved a rise
to ten shillings a week. In the following year the farmers repented of
their decision, and successively reduced wages shilling by shilling
until they were paying only seven shillings a week. In this strait
the men made inquiries about “the Trades Union,” and two delegates
from the Grand National visited the village. Upon their information
the Lovelesses established “the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Labourers,” having its “Grand Lodge” at Tolpuddle. For this village
club the elaborate ritual and code of rules of one of the national
orders of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union were adopted. No
secrecy seems to have been observed, for John Loveless openly ordered
of the village painter a figure of “Death painted six feet high for a
society of his own,”[264] with which to perform the initiation rites.
The farmers took alarm, and induced the local magistrates, on February
21, 1834, to issue placards warning the labourers that any one joining
the Union would be sentenced to seven years’ transportation. This was
no idle threat. Within three days of the publication of the notice the
Lovelesses and four other members were arrested and lodged in gaol.
The trial of these unfortunate labourers was a scandalous perversion
of the law. The Lovelesses and their friends seem to have been
simple-minded Methodists, two of them being itinerant preachers.
No accusation was made, and no evidence preferred against them, of
anything worse than the playing with oaths, which, as we have seen,
formed a part of the initiation ceremony of the Grand National and
other Unions of the time, with evidently no consciousness of their
statutory illegality. Not only were they guiltless of any intimidation
or outrage, but they had not even struck or presented any application
for higher wages. Yet the judge (John Williams), who had only recently
been raised to the bench, charged the grand jury on the case at
portentous length, as if the prisoners had committed murder or treason,
and inflicted on them, after the briefest of trials, the monstrous
sentence of seven years’ transportation.
The action of the Government shows how eagerly the Home Secretary
accepted the blunder of an inexperienced judge as part of his policy of
repression. Lord Melbourne expressed his opinion that “the law has in
this case been most properly applied”;[265] and the sentence, far from
exciting criticism in the Whig Cabinet, was carried out with special
celerity. The case was tried on March 18, 1834; before the 30th the
prisoners were in the hulks; and by the 15th of the next month Lord
Howick was able to say in the House of Commons that their ship had
already sailed for Botany Bay.[266]
The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union proved to have a wider
influence than the Government expected. The whole machinery of the
organisation was turned to the preparation of petitions and the
holding of public meetings, and a wave of sympathy rallied, for a
few weeks, the drooping energies of the members. Cordial relations
were established with the five great Unions which remained outside
the ranks, for the northern counties were mainly organised by the
Builders’ Union, the Leeds, Huddersfield and Bradford District Union,
the Clothiers’ Union, the Cotton-spinners’ Union, and the Potters’
Union, which on this occasion sent delegates to London to assist the
executive of the Grand National. The agitation culminated in a monster
procession of Trade Unionists to the Home Office to present a petition
to Lord Melbourne--the first of the great “demonstrations” which have
since become a regular part of the machinery of London politics. The
proposal to hold this procession had excited the utmost alarm, both
in friends and to foes. The _Times_, with the Parisian events of 1830
still in its memory, wrote leader after leader condemning the project,
and Lord Melbourne let it be known that he would refuse to receive
any deputation or petition from a procession. Special constables were
sworn in, and troops brought into London to prevent a rising. At
length the great day arrived (April 21, 1834). Owen and his friends
managed the occasion with much skill. In order to avoid interference
by the new police, the vacant ground at Copenhagen Fields, on which
the processionists assembled, was formally hired from the owner. The
trades were regularly marshalled behind thirty-three banners, each man
decorated by a red ribbon. At the head of the procession rode, in full
canonicals and the scarlet hood of a Doctor of Divinity, the corpulent
“chaplain to the Metropolitan Trades Unions,” Dr. Arthur S. Wade.[267]
The demonstration, in point of numbers, was undoubtedly a success. We
learn, for instance, that the tailors alone paraded from 5000 to 7000
strong, and the master builders subsequently complained that their
works had been entirely suspended through their men’s participation.
Over a quarter of a million signatures had been obtained to the
petition, and, even on the admission of the _Times_, 30,000 persons
took part in the procession, representing a proportion of the London of
that time equivalent to 100,000 to-day.[268]
Meanwhile Radicals of all shades hastened to the rescue. A public
meeting was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern at which Roebuck,
Colonel Perronet Thompson, and, Daniel O’Connell spoke; and a debate
took place in the House of Commons in which the ferocious sentence
was strongly attacked by Joseph Hume.[269] But the Government, far
from remitting the punishment, refused even to recognise that it was
excessive; and the unfortunate labourers were allowed to proceed to
their penal exile.[270]
The Dorchester conviction had the effect of causing the oath to
be ostensibly dropped out of Trade Union ceremonies, although in
particular trades and districts it lingered a few years longer.[271]
At their “parliament” in April 1834 the Builders’ Union formally
abolished the oath. The Grand National quickly adopted the same
course; and the Leeds and other Unions followed suit. But the judge’s
sentence was of no avail to check the aggressive policy of the Unions.
Immediately after the excitement of the procession had subsided, one
of the most important branches of the Grand National precipitated a
serious conflict with its employers. The London tailors, hitherto
divided among themselves, formed in December 1833 the “First Grand
Lodge of Operative Tailors,” and resolved to demand a shortening of the
hours of labour. The state of mind of the men is significantly shown
by the language of their peremptory notice to the masters. “In order,”
they write, “to stay the ruinous effects which a destructive commercial
competition has so long been inflicting on the trade, they have
resolved to introduce certain new regulations of labour into the trade,
which regulations they intend shall come into force on Monday next.” A
general strike ensued, in which 20,000 persons are said to have been
thrown out of work, the whole burden of their maintenance being cast on
the Grand National funds. A levy of eighteenpence per member throughout
the country was made in May 1834, which caused some dissatisfaction;
and the proceeds were insufficient to prevent the tailors’ strike
pay falling to four shillings a week. The result was that the men
gradually returned to work on the employers’ terms.[272]
These disasters, together with innumerable smaller strikes in various
parts, all of which were unsuccessful, shook the credit of the Grand
National. The executive attempted in vain to stem the torrent of
strikes by publishing a “Declaration of the Views and Objects of Trades
Unions,” in which they deprecated disputes and advocated what would now
be called Co-operative Production by Associations of Producers.[273]
They gave effect to this declaration by refusing to sanction the London
shoemakers’ demand for increased wages, on the ground that a conflict
so soon after the tailors’ defeat was inopportune. The result was
merely that a general meeting of the London shoemakers voted, by 782
to 506, for secession from the federation, and struck on their own
account.[274]
An even more serious blow was the lock-out of the London building
trades in July 1834. These trades in London had joined the Grand
Consolidated rather than the Builders’ Union; and in the summer of
1834 an act of petty tyranny on the part of a single firm brought
about a general conflict. The workmen employed by Messrs. Cubitt
had resolved not to drink any beer supplied by Combe, Delafield &
Co., in retaliation for the refusal of that firm to employ Trade
Unionists. Messrs. Cubitt thereupon refused to allow any other beer
to be drunk on their premises, and locked out their workmen. The
employers throughout London, angered by the Union’s resistance to
sub-contract and piecework, embraced this opportunity to insist that
all their employees should sign the hated “document.” The heads of the
Government departments in which building operatives were employed
placed themselves in line with private employers by making the same
demands.[275] The struggle dragged on until November 1834, when the
document seems to have been tacitly withdrawn, and the men returned to
work, accepting the employers’ terms on the other points at issue.[276]
We learn from the correspondence of the Stonemasons’ Society that this
defeat--for such it virtually was--completely broke up the organisation
in the London building trade. What was happening to the Builders’ Union
during these months is not clear. The federal organisation apparently
broke up at about this time; and the several trades fell back upon
their local clubs and national societies.
Whilst the London builders were thus engaged, similar struggles were
going on in the other leading industries. At Leeds, for instance, in
May 1834 the masters were again presenting the “document”; and the men,
after much resistance and angry denunciation, were compelled to abandon
the Clothiers’ Union. The Cotton-spinners, whom we left preparing to
carry out Fielden’s idea of a general strike for an eight hours day
with undiminished wages for all cotton operatives, resolved to demand
the reduction of hours from the 1st of March 1834, the day appointed
for the operation of the new Factory Act of 1833 limiting the hours
of children to eight per day. The operatives in many mills sent in
notices, which were simply ignored by the employers. In this they seem
to have estimated the weakness of the men correctly; for the expected
general strike was deferred by a delegate meeting until the 2nd of
June. That date found the men still unprepared for action, and the
strike was further postponed until the 1st of September. After that we
hear no more of it.
The Oldham operatives did indeed in April 1834 make an unpremeditated
attempt to secure eight hours. It happened that the local constables
broke up a Trade Union meeting. A rescue took place, followed by an
attack on an obnoxious mill, and the shooting of one of the rioters
by a “Knobstick.” The affray provoked the Oldham working class into
a spasm of insurrection. The workers in all trades, both male and
female, ceased work, and held huge meetings on the Moor, where they
were addressed by Doherty and others from Manchester, and demanded the
eight hours day. Within a week the excitement subsided, and work was
resumed.[277]
By the end of the summer it was obvious that the ambitious projects
of the Grand National Consolidated and other “Trades Unions” had
ended in invariable and complete failure. In spite of the rising
prosperity of trade, the strikes for better conditions of labour had
been uniformly unsuccessful. In July 1834 the federal organisations
all over the country were breaking up. The great association of half a
million members had been completely routed by the employers’ vigorous
presentation of the “document.” Of the actual dissolution of the
organisation we have no contemporary record, but the impression which
it made on the more sober Trade Unionists may be gathered from the
following description, which appeared in a working-class journal seven
years afterwards. “We were present,” says the editor of the _Trades
Journal_, “at many of the meetings of the Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union, and have a distinct recollection of the excitement that
prevailed in them--of the apparent determination to carry out its
principles in opposition to every obstacle--of the enthusiasm exhibited
by some of the speakers--of the noisy approbation of the meeting--the
loud cries of ‘hear hear,’ ‘bravo,’ ‘hurra,’ ‘union for ever,’ etc. It
was the opinion of many at that time that little real benefit would be
effected by this union, as their proceedings were indicative, not of a
calm and dispassionate investigation of the causes of existing evils,
but of an over-excited state of mind which would speedily evaporate,
and leave them in the same condition as before. The event proved that
this opinion was not ill-founded. A little mole-hill obstructed their
onward progress; and rather than commence the labour of removing so
puny an obstacle, they chose to turn back, each taking his own path,
regardless of the safety or the interests of his neighbour. It was
painful to see the deep mortification of the generals and leaders of
this quickly inflated army, when left deserted and alone upon the
field.”[278]
A period of general apathy in the Trade Union world ensued. The
“London Dorchester Committee” continued with indomitable perseverance
to collect subscriptions and present petitions for the return of the
six exiled labourers; but “the Trades Union,” together with the ideal
from which it sprang, vanished in discredit. The hundreds of thousands
of recruits from the new industries or unskilled occupations rapidly
reverted to a state of disorganisation. The national “orders” of
Tailors and Shoemakers, the extended organisations of Cotton-spinners
and Woollen-workers, split up into fragmentary societies. Throughout
the country the organised constituents of the Grand National fell back
upon their local trade clubs.
The records of the rise and fall of the “New Unionism” of 1830-4
leave us conscious of a vast enlargement in the ideas of the workers,
without any corresponding alteration in their tactics in the field. In
council they are idealists, dreaming of a new heaven and a new earth;
humanitarians, educationalists, socialists, moralists: in battle they
are still the struggling, half-emancipated serfs of 1825, armed only
with the rude weapons of the strike and boycott; sometimes feared and
hated by the propertied classes; sometimes merely despised; always
oppressed, and miserably poor. We find, too, that they are actually
less successful with the old weapons now that they wield them with new
and wider ideas. They get beaten in a rising market instead of, as
hitherto, only in a falling one. And we shall soon see that they did
not recover their lost advantage until they again concentrated their
efforts on narrower and more manageable aims. But we have first to
inquire how they came by the new ideas.
In the bad times which followed the peace of 1815 the writings of
Cobbett had attained an extraordinary influence and authority over the
whole of that generation of working men. His trenchant denunciation of
the governing classes, and his incessant appeals to the wage-earners
to assert their right to the whole administration of affairs, were
inspired by the political tyranny of the anti-Jacobin reaction, the
high prices and heavy taxes, and the apparent creation by “the Funding
System” of an upstart class of non-producers living on the interest
of the huge debt contracted by the nation during the war--evils the
least of which was enough to stimulate an eager politician like Cobbett
to the utmost exercise of his unrivalled power of invective. But the
working classes were suffering, in addition, from a calamity which
no mere politician of that time grasped, in the effects of the new
machine and factory industry, which was blindly crushing out the old
methods by the mere brute force of competition instead of replacing
it with due order and adjustment to the human interests involved.
This phenomenon was beyond the comprehension of its victims. Each of
them knew what was happening to himself as an individual; but only
one man--a manufacturer--seems to have understood what was happening
to the entire industry of the country. This man was Robert Owen. To
him, therefore, political Democracy, which was all-in-all to Cobbett
and his readers, appeared quite secondary to industrial Democracy,
or the co-operative ownership and control of industry answerable to
the economic co-operation in all industrial processes which had
been brought about by machinery and factory organisation, and which
had removed manufacture irrevocably from the separate firesides of
independent individual producers. With Cobbett and his followers the
first thing to be done was to pass a great Reform Bill, behind which,
in their minds, lay only a vague conception of social change. Owen and
his more enthusiastic disciples, on the other hand, were persuaded that
a universal voluntary association of workers for productive purposes on
his principles would render the political organisation of society of
comparatively trivial account.
The disillusionment of the newly emancipated Trade Clubs in the
collapse of 1825 left the working-class organisations prepared for
these wider gospels. Social reform was in the air. “Concerning the
misery and degradation of the bulk of the people of England,” writes
a contemporary observer, “men of every order, as well as every party,
unite and speak continually; farmers, parish officers, clergymen,
magistrates, judges on the bench, members on either side of both Houses
of Parliament, the King in his addresses to the nation, moralists,
statesmen, philosophers; and finally the poor creatures themselves,
whose complaints are loud and incessant.”[279] Cobbett and the
Reformers had the first turn. The chief political organisation of the
working classes during the Reform Bill agitation began as a trade
club. In 1831 a few carpenters met at their house of call in Argyle
Street, Oxford Street, to form a “Metropolitan Trades Union,” which
was to include all trades, and to undertake, besides its Trade Union
functions, a vague scheme of co-operative production and a political
agitation for the franchise.[280] But under the influence of William
Lovett the last object soon thrust aside all the rest. The purely
Trade Union aims were dropped; the Owenite aspirations sank into the
background; and under the title of the “National Union of the Working
Classes” the humble carpenters’ society expanded into a national
organisation for obtaining Manhood Suffrage. As such it occupies,
during the political turmoil of 1831-2, by far the largest place in the
history of working-class organisation, and was largely implicated in
the agitation and disturbances connected with the Reform Bill.[281]
The Reform Bill came and passed, but no Manhood Suffrage. The effect
of this disappointment at the hands of the most advanced political
party in the country is thus described by Francis Place, now become an
outside observer of the Trade Union Movement. “The year (1833) ended
leaving the (National) Union (of the Working Classes) in a state of
much depression. The nonsensical doctrines preached by Robert Owen
and others respecting communities and goods in common; abundance of
everything man ought to desire, and all for four hours’ labour out of
every twenty-four; the right of every man to his share of the earth in
common, and his right to whatever his hands had been employed upon; the
power of masters under the present system to give just what wages they
pleased; the right of the labourer to such wages as would maintain him
and his in comfort for eight or ten hours’ labour; the right of every
man who was unemployed to employment and to such an amount of wages as
have been indicated--and other matters of a similar kind which were
continually inculcated by the working men’s political unions, by many
small knots of persons, printed in small pamphlets and handbills which
were sold twelve for a penny and distributed to a great extent--had
pushed politics aside ... among the working people. These pamphlets
were written almost wholly by men of talent and of some standing in
the world, professional men, gentlemen, manufacturers, tradesmen, and
men called literary. The consequence was that a very large proportion
of the working people in England and Scotland became persuaded that
they had only to combine, as it was concluded they might easily do,
to compel not only a considerable advance in wages all round, but
employment for every one, man and woman, who needed it, at short hours.
This notion induced them to form themselves into Trades Unions in a
manner and to an extent never before known.”[282]
This jumble of ordinary Trade Union aims and communist aspirations,
described from the hostile point of view of a fanatical Malthusian and
staunch believer in the “Wage Fund,” probably fairly represents the
character of the Owenite propaganda. It made an ineradicable impression
on the working-class leaders of that generation, and inspired the great
surge of solidarity which rendered possible the gigantic enlistments of
the Grand National, with its unprecedented regiments of agricultural
labourers and women. Its enlargement of consciousness of the working
class was no doubt a good in itself which no mistakes in practical
policy could wholly cancel.[283] But Owen did mischief as well as
good; and as both the evil and the good live after him--for nothing
that Owen did can yet be said to be interred with his bones--it is
necessary to examine his Trade Union doctrine in some detail. He was
at his best when, as the experienced captain of industry, he denounced
with fervent emphasis that lowering of the Standard of Life which was
the result of the creed of universal competition. It was to combat
this that he advocated Factory Legislation, and promoted combinations
“to fix a maximum time and a minimum wages”; and it was by thus
attempting to secure the workers’ Standard of Life by legislation and
Trade Union action that he gained the influential support, not only
of philanthropists, but also of certain high-minded manufacturers,
with whose aid he formed in December 1833 the “Society for National
Regeneration,”[284] to which we have already referred. The most
definite proposal of this society, the shortening of the hours of
labour to eight per day, was what led to that suggestion of Fielden’s
on which the Lancashire cotton operatives acted in their abortive
general strike for an eight hours day. It also produced the long series
of “Short Time Committees” in the textile towns whose persistent
agitation eventually secured the passing of the Ten Hours Bill, itself
only an instalment of our great Factory Code. History has emphatically
justified Owen on this side of his labour policy.
But there was a Utopian side to it which acted more questionably.
The working-class world became, under his influence, inflated with a
premature conception and committed to an impracticable working scheme
of social organisation. He proved himself an able thinker and seer
when he pointed out that the horrible poverty of the time was a new
economic phenomenon, the inevitable result of unfettered competition
and irresponsible individual ownership of the means of production
now that those means had become enormously expensive and yet compact
enough to employ hundreds of men under the orders of a few, besides
being so prodigiously efficient as to drive the older methods quite
out of the market. But from the point of view of the practical
statesman, it must be confessed that he also showed himself something
of a simpleton in supposing, or at least assuming, that competition
could be abolished and ownership socialised by organising voluntary
associations to supersede both the millowners and the State. He had
tried the experiment in America with the famous community of New
Harmony, and its failure had for the time thoroughly disgusted him
with communities. But his disgust was not disillusion, for its only
practical effect was to set him to repeat the experiment with the Trade
Unions. Under his teaching the Trade Unionists came to believe that it
was possible, by a universal non-political compact of the wage-earners,
apparently through a universal expropriatory strike, to raise wages and
shorten the hours of labour “to an extent,” as Place puts it, “which,
at no very distant time, would give them the whole proceeds of their
labour.” The function of the brain-worker as the director of industry
was disregarded, possibly because in the cotton industry (in which Owen
had made a fortune) it plays but an insignificant part in the actual
productive processes, and is mainly concerned with that pursuit of
cheap markets to buy in and dear markets to sell in which formed no
part of the Utopian commonwealth at which “the Trades Union” aimed. The
existing capitalists and managers were therefore considered as usurpers
to be as soon as possible superseded by the elected representatives
of voluntary and sectional associations of producers, in which it
seems to have been assumed all the brain-working technicians would be
included. The modern Socialist proposal to substitute the officials
of the Municipality or State was unthinkable at a period when all
local governing bodies were notoriously inefficient and corrupt and
Parliament practically an oligarchy. Under the system proposed by Owen
the instruments of production were to become the property, not of the
whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them.
“There is no other alternative,” he said, “than National Companies for
each trade.... Thus all those trades which relate to clothing shall
form a company--such as tailors, shoemakers, hatters, milliners, and
mantua-makers; and all the different manufacturers [_i.e._ operatives]
shall be arranged in a similar way; communications shall pass from the
various departments to the Grand National establishment in London.” In
fact, the Trade Unions were to be transformed into “national companies”
to carry on all the manufactures.[285] The Agricultural Union was
to take possession of the land, the Miners’ Union of the mines, the
Textile Unions of the factories. Each trade was to be carried on by its
particular Trade Union, centralised in one “Grand Lodge.”