The Coal Industry Commission accordingly continued its sittings, now

concentrating upon the issue of Nationalisation and the participation

of the miners in control. The dramatic feature of the inquiry was

the summoning of a succession of peers and other magnates owning

mining royalties to the witness-chair, there to explain to the

Commission and the public, under the sharp cross-examination of the

Miners’ Federation officials, how they or their ancestors had become

possessed of these property rights, how much they yielded in each

case, and what social service the recipients performed for their huge

incomes. Much evidence was taken for and against State administration.

Within a couple of months of almost incessant daily sittings this

indefatigable Commission presented its further Report, again hopelessly

divided. On the question of ownership of minerals, indeed, the whole

thirteen Commissioners were unanimous--a momentous decision--in

recommending that the royalty owners should be at once expropriated

in favour of the State. All thirteen Commissioners were unanimous,

too, in recommending the admission of the workmen to some degree of

participation in the management by Pit and District Committees. But

there the Commissioners’ agreement ended. What was significant was that

not the miners’ representatives only, but eight out of the thirteen

(including the Chairman) reported in favour of expropriating all the

existing colliery companies and other coal-owners. The Chairman,

supported (in general terms and subject to additional suggestion)

by the six miners’ representatives, proposed an elaborate scheme of

Nationalisation, with administration under a Minister of Mines by

joint District Councils and Pit Committees, in which the men would be

largely represented. The other expropriating Commissioner preferred to

vest the mines in a series of District Coal Corporations of capitalist

shareholders, limited as to dividend, and working under public control,

with a restricted participation of the men in the administration. Five

Commissioners, including all three coal-owners, whilst agreeing to the

Nationalisation of Minerals, refused to contemplate any substantial

change in the working of the mines, least of all any effective sharing

of the workmen in the administration; though even this capitalist

minority gave lip-homage to the principle by recommending the formation

of purely Advisory Pit and District Committees.

The Government, which had continued in administrative and financial

control of all the collieries of the United Kingdom, whilst agreeing

to adopt, in the spirit and in the letter, the terms of Mr. Justice

Sankey’s first Report, took no steps to bring it into effect, and left

the local mine-owners and miners’ Unions to adjust for themselves

the hours and new rates of pay which it involved. Suddenly, a few

weeks before the new arrangements were to come into force, the Coal

Controller issued an order that no increase of rates was to exceed 10

per cent--a patent blunder, as it was the average reduction of output

that Mr. Justice Sankey had estimated at 10 per cent, and it was the

actual reduction in each district that had to be compensated for. The

Yorkshire Miners’ Association had almost completed its arrangements

with the Yorkshire mine-owners for a higher percentage of increase

when the Government prohibition was received. The result was an

angry strike which stopped the whole Yorkshire coalfield for several

weeks, and spread to Nottinghamshire. In the end the Government had

to withdraw its mistaken prohibition; and the increase of rates, in

Yorkshire as elsewhere, was, as the miners had asked, made as nearly as

possible proportionate to the expected local reduction in output caused

by the reduction of hours. The hasty action on both sides and the

misunderstandings due to imperfect knowledge, or imperfect expression,

lost the nation some four million tons of coal, and cost the Yorkshire

Miners’ Association about £356,000.

In October 1919 Mr. Lloyd George announced that whilst the

Government would propose the nationalisation of mining royalties,

and some-undefined “trustification” of the mines by districts, there

would be no adoption of Mr. Justice Sankey’s Report. The Miners’

Federation refused to accept anything in the nature of capitalist

“trustification,” and called in vain on the Government to fulfil its

pledge to carry out the Report. In December 1919 the Federation, in

conjunction with the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Committee of the

Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative Union, began a campaign

of propaganda in favour of the Nationalisation of the Coal Supply,

the effect of which, industrially and politically, has yet to become

manifest. We have to break off the story in the middle of a critical

period.

THE RAILWAYMEN

Another great industry, that of the operating staff of the railway

system--scarcely mentioned in the first edition of our _History_--has

come forcibly to the front. Right down to the end of the nineteenth

century, indeed, the railway guards and signalmen, engine-drivers and

firemen, shunters and porters, mechanics and labourers--though they

numbered something like 5 per cent of all the male manual-working

wage-earners--played hardly any part in the Trade Union Movement.

Scattered in small numbers all over the country, and divided among

themselves by differences of grade, conditions, and pay, they long

seemed incapable of organisation as a vocation. For a whole generation

after the establishment of railways no one appears to have thought

Trade Unionism any more permissible among their employees than

among the soldiers or the police. In 1865 an attempt to establish

“The Railway Working Men’s Provident Benefit Society”--which soon

became virtually a Trade Union--by Charles Bassett Vincent, a clerk

in the Railway Clearing House, was ruthlessly crushed by summary

dismissals. In the same year an Association of Engine-drivers and

Firemen on the North-Eastern Railway actually started a strike, but

perished of the attempt. Not until the end of 1871 was a lasting

Trade Union established, and then only by the assistance of Michael

Bass, M.P., a large railway shareholder, by whose long-continued

and entirely disinterested financial and other help the Amalgamated

Society of Railway Servants struggled into being, with Frederick

Evans as its first effective secretary. Other societies followed, of

local or sectional character; but even in 1892, after twenty years

of organisation, and various abortive strikes, there were fewer than

50,000 railwaymen in any sort of Trade Union, or less than one in seven

of the persons employed.[618]

The objects of such railwaymen’s societies as existed were for many

years confined to the protection of members from “victimisation” or

other tyranny; to the provision of friendly benefits; and to spasmodic

attempts to get accidents prevented or compensated for, and hours

of labour reduced. Wages questions took up little of the attention

of the railway Unions of these years; but strikes on particular

railways--sometimes of particular grades or at particular centres only

of a single railway--now and then occurred; usually in resentment

of some act of tyranny, or against some specially oppressive hours

of labour, and often without the prior approval of the Executive

Committee. In 1890 the Amalgamated Society for the first time launched

an aggressive policy, mainly as regards the hours of labour, which were

indeed scandalous.[619] A prolonged strike for a shorter working day on

the Scottish lines at Christmas 1890 ended in failure, and the merging

of the remnant of the Scottish Society of Railway Servants in the

larger Union. But it aroused public attention and led to an effective

exposure by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1891-92. As

a result the Board of Trade was given certain statutory powers in 1893

to remedy this tyranny--powers of which, unfortunately, little use was

made. Not for nine years afterwards did the Board of Trade even call

upon the railway companies for a return showing in how many cases men

were kept on duty in excess of twelve hours at a stretch. Four-fifths

of the railwaymen were still outside the ranks of Trade Unionism and

could therefore be both oppressed by their employers and flouted by

the Government Department. Their very right to combine was denied. Sir

George Findlay, the General Manager of the London and North-Western

Railway, voiced the common opinion of the Companies when he declared

that “you might as well have a Trade Union or an ‘Amalgamated Society’

in the Army, where discipline has to be kept at a very high standard,

as have it on railways.”

In December 1896, indeed, a determined attempt was made to root out

Trade Unionism in Sir George Findlay’s own railway company by the

dismissal of men discovered to be Trade Unionists. Through the activity

of the Society these victims found influential friends, who by public

and private pressure compelled their reinstatement. The excitement

caused by this incident had some share in swelling the membership of

the Amalgamated Society, which doubled its numbers during the year

1897; and made its first big stride in the “All Grades Movement” in

that year. Previous movements had been local and sectional, and nearly

always in the interests of particular grades. For the first time all

the railway companies were approached simultaneously, with a request

for improvements in all grades from one end of the service to the

other--a reduction of the time of duty, so as to bring the working

day down to ten, and for some grades eight hours; extra payments for

overtime, and a uniform advance of 2s. per week for all grades except

those for whom an eight hours day was sought. The Companies refused

even to consider this very moderate request, and nearly a decade was

to pass--a decade of slow building up of the organisation, first under

Mr. Richard Bell and Mr J. E. Williams, and then under Mr. J. H.

Thomas--before the Trade Unions of railwaymen were able to compel a

hearing for their case.[620]

Meanwhile the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and with it the

whole Trade Union Movement, suffered in the law courts a temporary

set-back. An impulsive strike on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales,

accompanied by extensive and successful picketing, was not countenanced

by the Executive, but was eventually endorsed by its decision to take

up the men’s case; and the Railway Company sued the Society for the

loss occasioned by what were alleged to be the unlawful acts of its

officers. To the surprise of the lawyers, as well as of the public, the

judges held that--in spite of what had seemed the explicit provisions

of the Trade Union Acts of 1871-76--a Trade Union could be made

answerable in damages for all the acts of its officials, central or

local, as if it were a corporate body, whilst still being denied the

privileges of a corporate body. The strike and legal proceedings cost

the Society from first to last nearly £50,000, whilst the danger to the

corporate funds of all Trade Unions that the decision revealed put a

damper on even the best justified strikes until, under persistent Trade

Union pressure, strengthened by the entry into the House of Commons of

a reinforced Labour Party, the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 restored the

law to its state prior to the judicial decisions of 1902.

The railwaymen could then renew their “All Grades Movement” which the

Companies in January 1907 again declined to consider, steadfastly

refusing any recognition of the men’s Trade Unions, and callously

denying their grievances.[621] Ballots of the membership of the

Amalgamated Society and the General Union decided on a strike by 80,026

to 1857 votes, and in November 1907 a national stoppage was at hand

when Mr. Lloyd George intervened as President of the Board of Trade,

compelled the Companies to listen to reason, and persuaded both parties

to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards,

composed of equal numbers representing management and men, with an

impartial chairman and authority to decide on wages and hours. These

Conciliation Boards, unsatisfactory as they proved, represented a real

triumph. For the first time the autocracy of the railway management

was broken. There was, it is true, still no express recognition of

the Trade Unions, but the men’s representatives were to be freely

elected on each railway by all the employees grouped according to

their grades; and these elected representatives met the management on

professedly equal terms. The elections showed how thoroughly justified

was the claim of the Railwaymen’s Trade Unions that they were voicing

the wishes of practically the whole body of railwaymen. In spite of

strenuous efforts by the management on most of the lines, and of the

unfortunate jealousies among the different societies, in nearly all

cases the nominees of one or other of the Unions were elected, often by

large majorities. For the next few years the Amalgamated Society and

the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen were busy

in fighting the cases of the various grades through the Conciliation

Boards, and in securing thereby many small increases of wages and

reductions of hours. But matters did not go smoothly. The Companies,

for the most part, pursued a policy of obstruction and postponement,

delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some

cases deliberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new

grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than

those prescribed. The “impartial” chairmen, moreover, differed among

themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of

the awards caused great resentment. Meanwhile the cost of living was

steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind

other organised workers. Progress was delayed in 1909-10 by a new

set-back which the Amalgamated Society suffered in the law courts, in

the prolonged litigation carried by one of its members, with capitalist

assistance, right up to the House of Lords, by which the participation

of any Trade Union in political activity was declared invalid--a

piece of “judge-made law” to which we shall recur, and for which the

Government and Parliament at first refused all redress. Suddenly, in

August 1911, the pot boiled over. There was a spirit of revolt in the

Labour world. In June and July the seamen and the dockers had struck,

and stopped the port of London. There was an outburst of “unauthorised”

railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns,

and a general demand for a national strike. The Executives of the four

principal railwaymen’s Unions, for once acting closely in concert, gave

the Companies twenty-four hours to decide whether they would consent

to meet the men’s representatives, or face a national stoppage. Once

more the Government intervened, Mr. Asquith offering a Royal Commission

of indefinite duration and issue, merely to propose amendments in

the scheme of Conciliation Boards, and at the same time definitely

informing the men--a fact which they judiciously refrained from

publishing--that the Government would not hesitate to use the troops

to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.[622]

The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began,

which, although far from universal, was sufficient to disorganise

the whole railway service--as many as 200,000 men stopping work--and

was rapidly bringing industry to a standstill. At the instance of

Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, an overpowering

display was made with the troops, which were sent to Manchester and

other places, without requisition by the civil authorities, at the

mere request of the Companies. In fact, a policy of repression had

been decided on, and bloodshed was near at hand. In vain did the Union

leaders ask Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, to take steps to obtain a

meeting between the Companies’ managers and the Union representatives.

Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed in the Cabinet, which

peremptorily instructed the Companies to let their General Managers

meet the men’s representatives face to face at the Board of Trade.

For just upon twelve hours these managers, thus coerced, negotiated

with four representatives of the Unions, together with Mr. Henderson

and Mr. J. R. MacDonald of the Parliamentary Labour Party. At last

an agreement was made--the first ever concluded between the Railway

Companies as a whole and the Trade Unions of their employees--for

an ending of the strike, on terms of complete reinstatement of the

strikers; an immediate consideration by the Conciliation Boards of

all grievances; and a prompt investigation by a bipartite Royal

Commission of the dissatisfaction with these Boards, and the best way

of amending the scheme.[623] When the Commission reported--it was

ultimately termed a Special Committee of Inquiry--the Railwaymen’s

Union once more asked the Companies to meet them for negotiation, which

the Companies again refused to do. On the Unions resolving to ballot

their members as to a national strike, the House of Commons set a new

precedent by passing, at the instance of the Government, a resolution

formally recommending a joint meeting, whereupon the Companies gave

way. At the meeting that ensued a new scheme of Conciliation Boards

was jointly agreed to, amending the 1907 scheme generally on the line

of the Special Committee’s report, but introducing most of the other

modifications that the Unions thought necessary. The machinery was made

more rapid in action, and the scope of the Boards was extended. Most

important of all, the men’s side of each Board was allowed to choose as

secretary a person not in the employ of the Company; and it accordingly

became possible for a Trade Union official to take up this work, and

that not only for a single grade but, by acting for several Boards,

simultaneously for all grades. This was not “recognition” in form, but

at any rate the Trade Union official was let in. During the next two

years, in spite of incredible obstructions, quibblings, and evasions by

the Companies, a number of small improvements in the terms of service

were obtained from the Boards for all the grades on practically all

the lines. A result of this joint working of even greater importance

was the merging, in 1913, after prolonged negotiations, of three out

of the four principal societies of manual railway workers[624]--the

Amalgamated, the General Union, and the United Pointsmen and

Signalmen--into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under

the title of the National Union of Railwaymen.

The “New Model” for Trade Union structure thus deliberately adopted

merits attention. In contrast with what we have called the “New

Model,” in 1851 of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that of 1913

represents an attempt to include, in a single “amalgamated” Union,

all the various “crafts” and grades of workers engaged in a single

industry throughout the whole kingdom. The declared object of the

National Union of Railwaymen is “to secure the complete organisation

of all workers employed on or in connection with any railway in the

United Kingdom.” It thus definitely negatives both “sectionalism”

and “localism” in favour of “Industrial Unionism.” Indeed, it may be

suggested that the new constitution passes, by definition, even beyond

the “Industrial Unionism,” to which the most advanced section of Trade

Unionists were aspiring, into what has been termed “Employmental

Unionism,” in that it seeks to enrol in one Union, not merely all

sections of railway workers, but actually all who are employed by any

railway undertaking--thus including, not only the engineering and

wood-working mechanics in the railway engineering workshops,[625] but

also the cooks, waiters, and housemaids at the fifty-five railway

hotels; the sailors and firemen on board the railway companies’ fleets

of steamers, and (though no trouble has actually arisen about them)

the compositors, lithographers, and bookbinders whom the railway

printing works employ in the production of tickets, time-tables,

office stationery, and advertisement posters; even the men whom one,

at least, of the largest companies keeps in constant employment at

the manufacture of crutches and wooden legs for the disabled members

of its staff. This all-inclusiveness has, since 1913, brought the

National Union of Railwaymen into conflict with many other Trade

Unions; and the question of the proper lines of demarcation has so

far remained unsettled. The principal new feature in constitutional

structure was the establishment of a distinct legislature--the Annual

General Meeting--consisting, in addition to the President and General

Secretary, of sixty representatives elected by the membership in

geographical constituencies of approximately equal size. Subordinate

to the Annual General Meeting (which can be summoned specially when

required) is the Executive Committee of the President, General

Secretary, and twenty-four other members, the latter being severally

elected by the device of the Single Transferable Vote by each of four

prescribed departments of members in each of six gigantic geographical

constituencies; one-third of such representatives retiring annually,

and after each triennial term of service, becoming ineligible for three

years, whilst the Branches to which they belong also become unable to

nominate representatives for a like term. The Executive Committee,

which, like the Annual General Meeting, consists of working railwaymen,

paid only for their days of service, meets quarterly and appoints four

sectional sub-committees, which must also meet at least quarterly.

Noteworthy, too, is the District Council, which--constitutionally

only a voluntary federation of geographically adjacent Branches for

propagandist and purely consultative purposes--has, with an unofficial

National Federation of District Councils, developed into an active

“caucus” of the more energetic members for discussing and promoting

“forward movements” in the Annual General Meeting, and “organising” the

elections to the Executive Committee.

With such a constitution, and the administration of extensive friendly

benefits in a society now approaching half a million members, it is

inevitable that the Executive Committee should wield extensive powers.

It initiates and conducts all trade movements, and can therefore call

a national strike, even without a ballot vote; and whilst it may take

a ballot vote at any time on any question, the rules expressly provide

that it is not to be bound by the members’ decision. Originally the

Executive Committee had power also “to settle” any dispute; but this

was withdrawn by resolutions of the Annual General Meetings of 1915

and 1916, which required all settlements to be reported to itself for

ratification. In practice very large powers, both of office management

and of negotiation, are necessarily exercised by the six salaried

officers, the President, the General Secretary, and the four Assistant

Secretaries, each of whom is responsible for a separate branch of the

Union’s work. They have, however, not been able to prevent a series of

“unauthorised” strikes, local or sectional in character.

At the beginning of 1914 everything pointed to a further forward

movement by the N.U.R. Its Annual General Meeting cordially accepted

the Miners’ proposal to unite with them and the Transport Workers in

the so-called Triple Alliance. Moreover, its desires now began to go

beyond improvements in wages and hours. Its representatives had, for

twenty years, sometimes moved and always supported the resolutions

of the Trades Union Congress in favour of the Nationalisation of

Railways. In 1913 the Railway Clerks’ Association had gone a step

further, and had asked also for participation in control. In 1914 the

resolution intended to be submitted on behalf of the N.U.R. declared

that “no system of State Ownership of the railways will be acceptable

to organised railwaymen which does not guarantee to them their full

political and social rights, allow them a due measure of control

and responsibility in the safe and efficient working of the railway

system, and assure to them a fair and equitable participation in

the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more economical and

scientific administration.” Here we have the first expressions of

the desire for participation in the management of the railways.[626]

From that time forward the demand has become ever more explicit

and determined. Meanwhile, however, the first step was plainly the

drastic amendment of the scheme of Conciliation Boards; and proposals

were under consideration when war broke out. In marked contrast with

their previous action, the Railway Companies were actually meeting

the Union representatives in a joint committee of seven a side. The

growth in membership of the National Union of Railwaymen at that date

to over 300,000, and its entry into the “Triple Alliance” of miners,

railwaymen, and transport workers, had, in fact, at last compelled the

Companies, in fact, to concede “recognition,” although they denied at

the time that they were so doing. During the war the actual alteration

of the scheme was to remain in abeyance, but the Executive Committee

came in 1915 to a provisional agreement with the Companies as to

certain amendments, which the Annual General Meeting of that year

considered inadequate and refused to sanction. Meanwhile, in view of

the rising cost of living, successive war bonuses, uniform throughout

the Kingdom for all grades of the traffic staff, were obtained from the

President of the Board of Trade--the cost, in effect, falling on the

Government under its arrangement for guaranteeing to the shareholders

the net revenue of 1913--amounting altogether to 33s. per week for men,

16s. 6d. per week for women and boys, and 8s. 3d. per week for girls,

thus more than doubling the average pre-war wages. The Government,

moreover, promised sympathetic consideration of the men’s demand for an

Eight Hours’ Day immediately on the termination of the war.

When the Armistice in November 1918 brought hostilities to an end,

negotiations were at once begun for a settlement of the outstanding

questions. The National Union of Railwaymen, in more friendly

conjunction with the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and

Firemen, whilst gaining advances fully equivalent to the increase in

the cost of living, had secured in principle not only recognition, but

also the valuable right of entering into negotiation with the united

management of all the railways, instead of always being referred to

the several companies; and even more important, it had obtained, in

the uniform war bonuses, the basis of national rates of wages for

the several grades, instead of rates and classes of workers varying

from company to company. It was now to secure, without an effort, the

Eight Hours’ Day, to come into operation on February 1, 1919, which

the Government, not even consulting the Railway Companies, singly or

collectively, in December 1918, conceded in principle without reduction

of wages, whilst the necessary reclassification of workers and

adjustment of times and wages on a national system became the subject

of prolonged and difficult negotiations between the Railway Executive

Committee and the two principal Unions.

The negotiations for “standardisation” which necessarily involved

the amalgamation of the uniform war bonus with the varying basic

rate, were dragged out by the Government from February to the end of

August, to the growing irritation of the railwaymen. What occurred,

as Ministers subsequently confessed, or rather boasted, was that,

beginning actually in February, the Government made extensive secret

preparations to break the strike which it was foreseen would occur when

the Government’s decisions were made known. The railwaymen themselves

confidently expected, seeing that the cost of living had not fallen,

but was officially certified, in September 1919, at 115 per cent above

that of July 1914, that their rates would be “standardised upwards,” so

as both to adopt the scales of the best companies for all the staff,

and to include the whole of the war bonus. But this automatic inclusion

of the war bonus in the Standard Rate, which some trades had already

secured, was exactly what the leading industrial employers were, for

their own trades, anxious to prevent. They counted, indeed, on bringing

about throughout British industry, during 1919 or 1920, irrespective of

any change in the cost of living, a general reduction of the “swollen”

wages of war-time; and there was a prevalent feeling among them, which

is known to have been shared by some, at least, of the Ministers, and

quite frankly expressed, that a big “fight with the Trade Unions”

was inevitable, and that it would be “better to get it over” before

industry had generally restarted under peace conditions. How far Sir

Auckland Geddes, who as President of the Board of Trade was responsible

for the negotiations, and his brother, Sir Eric Geddes, who as Minister

of Transport took over the work, shared this view, and allowed it to

inspire their official action, has not been revealed. The historian

can only note that the Government proceedings appear consistent with

this hypothesis. The Government deliberately separated from the mass

of railwaymen the locomotive drivers and firemen, whose services were

regarded as specially indispensable, and whose allegiance was divided

between the two rival Unions. In August acceptable terms were proposed

for these two classes, which conceded not only the absorption of the

whole war bonus in the new scale of wages, but also certain further

increases of pay, coming near to the Union’s full claims. Such a

concession, it was subsequently noted, was admirably calculated, in

the event of a strike, to detach the drivers and firemen from their

fellow-members; to divide the two Unions, and to arouse expectations

in the other grades which would make it practically certain that they

would indignantly refuse the offer that was to be made in a few weeks.

When the “definite” decision of the Government was sent to the Union,

in a letter in which Sir Auckland Geddes with his own hand altered the

word to “definitive,” as if in order to ensure an explosion, it was

found that by the new scale, beginning on January 1, 1920, every grade

was to suffer a reduction of existing earnings, varying from only

a shilling or two per week in some cases up to as much as sixteen

shillings per week--the new standard rate of the porter, for instance,

being fixed at 40s., as compared with the 51s. or 53s. that he was

actually receiving, or with the 60s. per week for which the Union had

asked. No explanation was given by the brothers Geddes that what was

intended was that there should be on January 1, 1920, no reduction

whatever in the men’s earnings, and that the Government’s policy was

(as subsequently stated by Mr. Lloyd George, but only on the very

morning of the strike, which was the first revelation of it) that there

should never be any reduction at all unless the cost of living fell

for over three months below 110 per cent in excess of pre-war prices,

and that (as was announced only in the Government advertisements on

the eighth day of the strike) the future “sliding scale,” which had

never been definitely formulated, would be allowed to work upwards as

well as downwards. Unless the intention of the “definitive” offer was

then and there to provoke an indignant strike, why was no hint of this

“policy for 1920” included; why was it left to be only incidentally

revealed, in such a way as not to be easily understood, in the final

personal discussion with the Prime Minister; and, seeing that the

Minister of Food himself had publicly announced that what was probable,

from January 1920, was not a fall but a further rise in the cost of

living, why was the alarming suggestion of a reduction to 40s. per

week ever made at all? It is almost impossible to avoid the inference

that the Government, which certainly decided the date and the issues,

decided also the strike itself, with a view to “beating the Union,”

in order to get a free hand for railway reorganisation without the

necessity of consulting the operatives; in order, probably, to fit in

with the general capitalist project of a scaling down of the “swollen”

war-wages; and, as some say, in order to supply Mr. Lloyd George with a

useful “election stunt,” with which, in the eyes of the middle class,

irretrievably to damage the Labour Party.

Whether intentionally on the part of the Ministers, or by reason

of an amazing maladroitness in their negotiations, what had been

foreseen and expected by the Government, and for six months secretly

prepared for, actually came to pass. On Wednesday, September 24, the

Executive Council of the National Union of Railwaymen issued orders

for a national strike to begin at midnight on Friday, September 26,

unless countermanded by telegraph. So little had the Union intended

or contemplated such action that absolutely no notice of the crisis

had been given to the Miners’ Federation or the Transport Workers’

Federation, who were the railwaymen’s colleagues in the Triple

Alliance; and the Union had only some £3000 available in cash. Efforts

were made by the men to avert the stoppage, which it was recognised

would be a national calamity. The Executive Council sought and obtained

long interviews with the Prime Minister himself on Thursday, and even

on the Friday morning; and the verbatim reports of these discussions

reveal (_a_) that the Government showed no inclination to meet the

men’s case--Sir Eric Geddes peremptorily intervening at one point even

to prevent a criticism of the “definitive” new scale being adduced;

(_b_) that the Government did not even then set forth what subsequently

turned out to have been the proposal that the Ministry of Transport had

really intended to make (unless, indeed, we are to assume that the

“definitive” offer was silently changed in the course of the strike).

Again, it can only be inferred that Mr. Lloyd George either did not

wish to prevent the strike or else was quite exceptionally below his

usual level of lucidity in explanation of any scheme that he wished to

have accepted. What the Prime Minister did was immediately to denounce

to the public the National Union of Railwaymen as engaged in an

anarchist conspiracy!

The nine days’ stoppage that ensued was, in many respects, the most

remarkable industrial conflict that we have yet seen. Half a million

railwaymen left their work at midnight on the 26th of September, the

Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen at once joining

loyally with the N.U.R., and very nearly every member of either Union

coming out. The men on the Irish railways were directed to remain at

work. Never before had there been so nearly a complete stoppage of the

railway service from one end of Great Britain to the other. It is to be

noted that the third Union, the Railway Clerks’ Association (which had

come to include the Clerical, Administrative, and Supervisory Staffs),

directed its members to remain absolutely neutral, and not to do any of

the strikers’ work. The various Unions of Post Office employees sought

and obtained an official decision that they were not to be called upon

to do any service hitherto done by men on strike. The Government, which

sent soldiers to guard some of the railway stations,[627] hastened

to announce publicly--in significant contrast with its decision of

1912--that in no case would the troops be employed to run trains. For

the first time the Government found itself liable to pay unemployment

benefit to all other workers who were stopped as a result of the

strike; and for the enormous extension of the State Unemployment

Benefit that was expected to be required, arrangements were promulgated

under which the Benefit would be issued by each employer to his own

wage-earners, when these were thrown idle by the strike; and that

whilst such persons might be called upon to take temporary employment

in handling food supplies, they would not be required to accept service

on the railways themselves.

There was, in spite of wild newspaper exaggerations, practically no

disorder and no attempt to injure property. Except in a very few cases,

in which local mishandling of the situation by the authorities led to

resentment and misunderstanding, the Executive Council’s order that

the horses were not to be allowed to suffer was cordially acted on by

the men. The Government was allowed, without attempt at obstruction,

to bring at once into operation the elaborate arrangements it had long

been preparing, for ensuring the regular supply of London and other

large towns with milk and other foodstuffs by means of an extensive

motor-lorry service. Volunteers for railway work were called for, and

with the aid of the small remnant of non-unionists a tiny trickle of

trains was set going, which provided for the local passenger service

in London and some other cities; and gradually accomplished one or

two long-distance trains per day, which carried the mails and were

crowded with venturous passengers. What stopped almost completely

was the mineral and heavy goods traffic, and by the end of the week

so many industries had come to the end of their fuel, and so many

coalpits were short of waggons and of room at the pithead, that,

whilst nearly 400,000 workmen in collieries and factories were already

idle, the next week would have seen literally millions unemployed.

Meanwhile, in spite of press reports to the contrary, the Union

Executives knew that, whilst a few men returned to work, each day more

joined the strikers, so that there were actually a greater number

signing the book at the end than at the beginning of the struggle.

But the National Union of Railwaymen found considerable difficulty in

realising from its investments, and in making locally available at a

couple of thousand centres, sufficient cash to pay immediately the

half a million pounds of strike pay that was required; and only the

prompt and cordial assistance of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s

printing department, which got out the necessary supply of cheques in

marvellously quick time, and of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s

Bank, which made the N.U.R. cheques payable at the several Co-operative

Societies themselves, averted a breakdown. Food was in some cases

refused to the strikers by shopkeepers; and it may be that it was only

the prompt assistance of the Co-operative Societies, which agreed to

honour vouchers issued by the local strike committees, that prevented

the Government from putting in operation a project of starving out the

railwaymen’s families by withdrawing their ration cards or withholding

the food supplies under Government control. One blow below the belt

the Government did strike in arbitrarily commanding the withholding

from the strikers of a whole week’s pay which they had earned by their

service prior to the stoppage, and which it was the custom of the

companies always to keep in hand for a week by way of security against

theft or embezzlement. This had never been done in any previous railway

strike. Whether or not the railwaymen had broken any legal contract

of service by giving only three days’ notice of their strike, is not

clear--the point appears never to have been raised or decided,--but in

any case the companies had only a right to sue each man for any damages

that might be shown to be caused by such a breach of contract; and the

Government had plainly no legal warrant for becoming the judge in its

own cause, and itself arbitrarily assessing the damages due from each

man at precisely one week’s earnings. This action, coupled with the

evasive and ever-changing terms of the Government’s wage proposals,

and the campaign of abuse that the Government organised throughout the

press--personally directed by Sir William Sutherland, one of the Prime

Minister’s secretaries--had a great influence in rallying the Trade

Union world in support of the railwaymen.

The “publicity campaign,” by which, for the first time in an industrial

struggle, a persistent organised appeal was made by both sides to

public opinion, was, indeed, the most remarkable feature of the

struggle. At the outset the Government, in spite of the outspoken

advocacy of the _Daily Herald_, had it all its own way. The public,

seriously inconvenienced by the stoppage, was told by nearly every

newspaper in the Kingdom--daily supplied by a Government office with

a lengthy bulletin of “Strike News”--that the strike was the result

of an “anarchist” conspiracy among the railwaymen; that the Union had

wantonly broken off negotiations without cause because it positively

wished to “hold up” the whole community; that the Government had

not really intended any reduction of wages at all, and that the

figure of 40s. had reference only to the contingency of the cost of

living reverting to what it was before the war; that, in fact, the

Government were positively doubling the railwaymen’s wages, and that

the men, realising this, and discovering how they had been deceived

by their Executive Council, were resuming their duties at all points.

To counteract this Government propaganda, the _Daily Herald_ made

the most enterprising arrangements for getting its issue distributed

all over England, and more than doubled its circulation, whilst the

National Union of Railwaymen employed its own Publicity Department,

utilising for this purpose the Labour Research Department.[628] A

number of competent writers, cartoonists, and statisticians belonging

to the Labour Party placed their services in this way at the Research

Department’s disposal, so that the Executive Council was able, within a

couple of days, to pour forth a stream of articles, letters, speeches,

and cartoons, for which the newspapers generally accorded space.[629]

Every move of the Government, and every statement that it issued,

was immediately countered by an appropriate answer. When Mr. Lloyd

George supplied a message denouncing the strikers which appeared on

the film in every cinema, Mr. J. H. Thomas was himself filmed in the

act of delivering a cogent reply. But the Union’s Publicity Department

found the space given by the newspapers inadequate, and started

placing full-page advertisements in the _Times_ and other newspapers,

in which the Government’s equivocations and evasions as to the wages

offered were effectively exposed. The Government followed suit,

and presently the two advertisements appeared on successive pages,

with the unforeseen result that the Government’s statement of its

proposals to the men was detected in changing from day to day as the

strike continued, growing progressively more favourable to the men,

but professing still to be the “definitive” decision of Sir Auckland

Geddes which had provoked the strike. The outcome of a week’s skilfully

organised “publicity” was a steady shifting of public opinion, and even

a distinct change in the newspaper editorials. By the end of the week

the men’s case was winning.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the principal Trade Unions indirectly

affected by the railway stoppage, notably the various sections of

Transport Workers, together with officials or representatives of the

Miners, the Parliamentary Committee, and the Labour Party, had been

meeting in anxious conclave--summoned, it should be stated, by the

Executive of the National Transport Workers’ Federation--with a view to

restraining their own members from impetuous action in support of the

railwaymen, and to bringing pressure to bear on both parties to secure

a settlement. At first the prospect seemed hopeless. The Government

took up an attitude of defiance. Mr. Lloyd George declared that he

would not enter into any negotiations with the railwaymen’s Unions

until the men had unconditionally returned to their duty. A national

appeal was made to all the Local Authorities--not to strengthen the

police force by special constables, as is the constitutional procedure,

but to institute a “Citizen Guard,” in order to repel the forces of

disorder; a wild use of a term of bad omen, which was calculated,

if not intended, to bring the “class war” into the streets. It was

known that measures of arbitrary confiscation of the Union funds

were seriously under consideration, together with discriminatory

issues of food supplies. On the other side, the feeling of the Trade

Unionists was rising to anger. The position could not well have been

more serious. But the “eleven”--afterwards the “fourteen”--Trade

Union mediators were patient and persistent. They had long interviews

with the railwaymen’s Executive. They had long discussions with the

Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister

of Transport. They cleared up misunderstandings. They eliminated

provocative expressions. They brought the Government to admit

that there was no present chance of reducing wages. They got the

railwaymen to see that merely to postpone the issue was to strengthen

their grip upon what they were actually receiving. Notwithstanding

the Government’s defiant words, the Trade Union mediators got the

railwaymen’s Executive Council into prolonged and repeated discussions

at 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister and his colleagues.[630]

At last, on Sunday morning, October 3, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Thomas

were closeted together for the final stage; the news was immediately

flashed all over the kingdom that the strike was settled, and in the

evening Mr. Thomas announced to a mass meeting of railwaymen in the

Albert Hall the terms of settlement. These included an immediate

resumption of work without victimisation or recrimination; payment of

the impounded arrears of wages; “stabilisation” of existing earnings

of all rates (except where improved) until September 30, 1920;

negotiations as to “standardisation” and settlement of wage scales to

be begun again, and a settlement to be come to before December 31,

1919; and the lowest adult railwayman to be raised forthwith to 51s.

per week as a minimum. Before the end of 1919 it was announced that the

Government had agreed to concede, for the future, that all questions

relating to the conditions of service should be dealt with, not by

the railway companies but by a Central Board of ten members (with

power to increase by a further one on each side), five nominees of the

National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive

Engineers and Firemen, and five representatives of the railway

management. In case of disagreement, reference will be made to an

Appeal Board of twelve members, four nominated by these Trade Unions,

four representing the management, and four the general public, with a

chairman nominated by the Government. What is specially significant

is that it is recognised that “the public” does not consist merely of

the upper and middle, or of the capitalist and professional classes.

Of the four representatives of the public, two are to be nominated,

respectively, by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and the Federation

of British Industries, and two, respectively, by the Parliamentary

Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Co-operative Union, who

are thus taken to represent the four-fifths of the population (and

therefore of the railway users) who are manual working wage-earners.

At the same time it was conceded that the Advisory Committee for

Railway Management, which replaces under the Minister of Transport

the Railway Executive Committee, is to include, from the start, three

representatives of the railwaymen’s Unions, all the members having

equal and identical functions and rights.

We do not yet know what agreement will be reached about

“standardisation” or the future scale of wages, but the Ministry of

Transport is not likely to try another fall with the railwaymen’s Trade

Unions. The strike has had, indeed, results of the first importance.

The Government has learnt that Trade Unionism is not easily beaten,

even when all the resources of the State are put forth against it, and

when public opinion is incensed. The great capitalist organisations

have seen the warning against their projects of a general reduction of

wages; and this is postponed, at least, for a year. On the other hand,

the railwaymen’s Unions have realised the magnitude of the struggle

into which they so precipitately entered, or into which they were so

artfully inveigled. The need for, and the potency of, skilled publicity

work, and the possibilities of a highly organised and adequately

supported Labour Research Department, are commonly recognised. Finally,

it is seen that national industrial conflicts of such a magnitude are

matters of wider concern to the Trade Union world than any one Union

can appreciate; and an attempt was made, to be subsequently described,

if not to continue in existence the group of “Fourteen Mediators,” at

least to get established some authoritative standing Council, by which

the approach of an impending industrial crisis of national scope could

be closely watched, so that all the necessary steps may be taken in

time to deal with the situation in the best possible way. The Trade

Union world realised its need for what was called a General Staff.

AMALGAMATIONS AND FEDERATIONS

Whilst the numerical strength and industrial and political influence

of the several Trade Unions have thus steadily increased during the

past thirty years, it is less easy to characterise the changes in the

relations of Trade Unions with each other.

The multiplicity of separate organisations in which the six or seven

million Trade Unionists are grouped, and the complication and diversity

of the relations among the various societies, continue to-day, as they

did thirty years ago, to baffle classification, and almost to defy

analysis. It remains as impossible as it was in 1890 to state precisely

how many distinct Trade Unions are in existence, because the endless

variety of their federal organisations makes it uncertain which

of the local or sectional Unions are to be counted as independent

societies. We estimate, however, that upon any computation the number

of financially distinct organisations, which we may put at about 1100,

remains approximately what it was thirty years ago. The tendency to

amalgamation, that is to say, has just about kept pace, arithmetically,

with the starting of new organisations, whilst the average membership

of each unit has more than quadrupled.

Such a statement fails, however, to do justice to the change that

has come over the Trade Union world. Thirty years ago it was, on the

whole, a congeries of numerically small units, only two or three of

which counted as many as 50,000 members. To-day there are nearly a

dozen which severally manage memberships of a quarter of a million,

and probably fifty which deal with more than 50,000 each. A few other

national societies of smaller membership are of some importance.

Scattered up and down the United Kingdom a thousand other local or

sectional societies exist, with memberships from a few dozen to a

few thousand, but these play no part and exercise no influence in

the movement as a whole. Probably five-sixths of all the Trade Union

membership, and practically all its effective force, are to be found

among the hundred principal societies to which the Ministry of Labour

has long confined its detailed statistics.[631]

The movement for the amalgamation of competing societies has, during

the past decade, been specially energetic and persistent. This has

arisen, partly spontaneously, from the obvious disadvantages attendant

both on rivalry between Trade Unions seeking to enrol the same classes

of members throughout the kingdom--such as that between the various

societies of railway employees--and on the division of workmen of the

same craft among a number of independent local societies, such as the

Coopers, the Chippers and Drillers, and the Painters and other branches

of the Building Trades. But during the past decade the movement has

been reinforced by the desire for an organisation based on the whole

of an industry, such as engineering, housebuilding, mining, or the

railway service, in which all the co-operating crafts and grades of

workers would be associated in a single Industrial Union; in contrast

with the earlier conception of the separate organisation of each craft

throughout the whole kingdom; such as that of the carpenters, the

enginemen, the engineering mechanics, the clerks, and by analogy the

general labourers, in whatsoever industry they may be working. The case

for the Industrial Union in such an industry as mining, for example,

merely from the standpoint of Collective Bargaining, and for the sake

of getting effective Common Rules, has always been a strong one; but

the movement for the substitution of “Industrial” for “Craft” Unionism

has been strengthened since about 1911 by the aspirations of those who

saw in Trade Unionism something more than an organisation for raising

wages and shortening the working day. If the wage-earners were ever to

obtain, through their own voluntary associations, the control of their

own working lives, and to obtain a steadily increasing participation

in the direction of industry; if a Vocational Democracy were to be

superimposed on a Democracy based on geographical constituencies; it

seemed as if this could be done only by Trade Unions co-extensive with

each separate industry. The influence of the movement known as “Guild

Socialism” has accordingly been exercised, on the whole, in favour

of Industrial Unionism, not so much for the sake of its immediate

advantages in improving the conditions of the wage-contract, as because

it was only in this form that Trade Unionism could become the vehicle

of aspirations to the control of each industry by the whole mass of the

workers employed therein.

Except in the way of industrial federations, to be hereafter referred

to, it is only in mining and the railway service that any great

progress has been made in this direction. The Miners’ Federation of

Great Britain, established, as we have seen, only in 1888, with no

more than 36,000 members, has attracted to itself, year by year, an

almost continuous stream of local or sectional organisations among

the 1,200,000 workers in and about the coal and iron-stone mines;

successively absorbing into one or other of its local units or

affiliating directly to itself, not only all the district associations,

old or new, of coal-hewers and other underground workers, but also

some of the separate organisations of enginemen and firemen, mine

mechanics, deputies and overmen, colliery clerks, cokemen, and others

employed in or about the mines, until its aggregate membership in 1920

is somewhere about 900,000. And though the Miners’ Federation is still

only a Federation of fully autonomous district associations--some

of these, too, being themselves federations of the organisations of

lesser localities; and although it still depends for its funds almost

entirely upon specific levies upon its constituents, it has found

means, by its frequently meeting delegate conferences, controlling

the strong Executive Committee which they elect, to centralise very

effectively the general policy of the whole mining industry, notably

with regard to the hours of labour, the conditions of safety, the

percentage of general advances of wages and the amount of the national

war bonuses, and last, though not least, on the burning issue of

nationalisation of the mines and the participation of the miners in

their administration. But although the Miners’ Federation embodies in

its constitution the principles of federalism and an extreme local

autonomy, it takes no account of sectional differences, and makes no

provision for the representation at its delegate conferences, or upon

its Executive Committee, of any distinct grades or sections. Perhaps,

for this reason, the Federation does not yet speak directly for all

the organised manual working wage-earners in the industry. There are

at least forty separate Trade Unions of enginemen, boilermen and

firemen, colliery mechanics, cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen

and other officials, colliery clerks, and surface-workers of various

kinds, not yet affiliated to the Miners’ Federation, either locally or

nationally; these have formed National Federations, parallel with the

Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, of enginemen, deputies, colliery

mechanics and under-managers respectively; and in February 1917

seventeen of the societies drew together to form the National Council

of Colliery Workers other than Miners, for the purpose of maintaining

their separate influence.

In the railway service, as we have already described, the merging in

the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, first of the Scottish

Society in 1892, and then of the General Railway Workers’ Union, and

the United Signalmen and Pointsmen’s Society in 1913, made possible the

establishment of the National Union of Railwaymen on the basis of an

organisation co-extensive with the industry, with the embodiment in the

constitution of sectional representation. The four “departments” into

which the members are divided vote separately in the elections. Under

these provisions the National Union of Railwaymen, though hampered

by the continuance of the separate Associated Society of Locomotive

Engineers and Firemen, has been able to make effective not only its

claims for higher remuneration, but also its demands for a normal

Eight Hours Day, a national system of classification, and national

wage scales for the several grades; though still not its aspirations

(expressed since 1914) to participation in management, or those

(expressed for over a decade) to the elimination from industry of the

capitalist profitmaker by the scheme of Railway Nationalisation.

In other industries, too, the concentration of Trade Union forces

during the past decade has increasingly taken the form of an

amalgamation of rival sectional organisations, sometimes in response

to a demand from the rank and file. Thus the Ship Constructors’ and

Shipwrights’ Association, established in 1888, has successfully

absorbed not only the very old Shipwrights’ Provident Union of London,

but also all the remaining local Trade Unions of shipwrights that long

lingered in Liverpool, Dublin, etc. The National Amalgamated Furnishing

Trades Association has taken over a number of small societies of French

polishers, gilders, and upholsterers. The United Garment Workers’ Trade

Union was formed in 1915 by the amalgamation of a number of societies

in the various sections of the tailoring trade; and in 1919 it was

agreed that this, together with the Scottish Society of Tailors and

Tailoresses, should be merged in the old Amalgamated Society of Tailors

and Tailoresses, which would then include practically all the organised

workers in the making of men’s and women’s clothing in Great Britain.

Many small Unions of machine workers, minor craftsmen, and general

labourers have been absorbed in one or other of the half-a-dozen large

Labour Unions. The Amalgamated Card and Blowing-Room Operatives have

taken over various small sectional societies in the Cotton trade. In

Sheffield thirteen small Unions, catering for different sections of

the gold and silver workers, joined together in 1910 in the Gold,

Silver, and Kindred Trades Society, which in 1913 absorbed several more

societies in this industry. In the autumn of 1919, as we have already

mentioned, six of the sectional societies in the engineering industry

decided to merge themselves, with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,

in a new and more gigantic amalgamation with 400,000 members; the

United Pattern Makers’ Society, the Electrical Trades Union, and many

small and specialised societies of mechanics in iron still standing

aloof. In the same month three of the principal Unions of postal and

telegraph employees united in a single Union of Post Office Workers,

with 90,000 members. Other amalgamations among small or local

societies took place among the Basketmakers, the Block Printers, the

Leather-workers, the Dyers, the various sections in the Pottery Trade,

etc.

Such amalgamation is greatly obstructed by legal requirements.

Down to 1917 the law demanded that each society desiring to unite

should ratify the decision by a two-thirds majority not merely of

those voting, but of the entire membership. Such a poll is almost

impossible of attainment by Trade Unions, whose members cannot usually

be individually communicated with, owing not only to their frequent

changes of residence and the absence of many of them abroad, but also

to the lack, in most cases, of any complete register of addresses. In

1917 the Government at last permitted the passage of an Amending Act

for which Trade Unionists had often pressed; but even then insisted

on any amalgamation being carried, at a 50 per cent poll of the whole

membership, by at least 20 per cent majority, conditions which make

amalgamation everywhere difficult, and in some Unions (such as those

of seamen) quite impossible. In several cases Unions in which the

general opinion has been in favour of amalgamation have failed to get

the necessary vote. We have already described the ingenious device by

which the British Steel Smelters’ Society and the Iron and Steel Trades

Confederation surmounted this difficulty.

Meanwhile, of federations as distinct from amalgamations the Trade

Union world has a variety more bewildering than ever, some of which

have already been referred to. We have to note that the Engineering and

Shipbuilding Trades Federation, the establishment of which in 1889 we

described in _Industrial Democracy_, has continued in existence, doing

useful work from time to time in connection with demarcation disputes

and other subjects of inter-union controversy, especially on the

North-East Coast, notably contributing also in 1905 to the successful

claim of the Clyde trades to weekly instead of fortnightly pays,

which the employers had stubbornly resisted for a whole decade, but

continuing to be weakened by the abstention, except for a few years,

of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which, however, now frequently

consents to act in conjunction with it in general trade questions.

What is significant is the change in type and purpose of these

multifarious industrial federations, which have now come to form

an important element in the Trade Union world.[632] Federation, in

fact, has undergone a subtle change of character. Instead of loose

alliances for mutual support in disputes, or for the adjustment of

mutual differences as to “demarcation” and transfer of members, the

federations of all the craft or sectional Unions engaged in particular

industries--notably those of the Building Trades, the Transport

Workers, and, though not yet to the same extent, the Printing Trades

and the Woollen Workers, like the older organisation of the Cotton

Operatives--have become increasingly, themselves negotiating bodies,

recognised by the equally organised employers, and concerting with

these what are, in effect, national regulations governing their

industries throughout the whole kingdom. The later development of the

Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation has been in the same

direction. In the case of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain

the development has gone still further; and this great organisation,

whilst retaining the federal form, and, even now, not completely

admitted to “recognition” by the Mining Association of Great Britain,

unquestioningly acts for the whole industry in national issues, as

if it were an “amalgamated” Union. Whether or not we are to see all

the rival and sectional Unions in each industry amalgamating into a

single “Industrial Union,” as many Trade Unionists desire, it must be

recognised that the development, during the past decade, of active

negotiating federations for the several industries goes far to supply

the most urgent need. In short, although financially distinct Trade

Unions remain, on the whole, as numerous as ever, the number of

separate negotiating bodies, so far as concerns matters relating to an

industry as a whole, becomes steadily smaller.

We pass now to federal bodies of a different character.

THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS

In 1899, arising out of the losses caused by the costly engineering

dispute of 1897-98, the Trades Union Congress established a General

Federation of Trade Unions, largely at the instance of Robert Knight,

the able secretary of the Boilermakers, designed exclusively as a

mutual reinsurance agency against the heavy financial burden to which,

in the form of Strike Pay, or Dispute or Contingent Benefit, labour

disputes subject every active trade society.[633] By means of a small

contribution from a large aggregate membership (1s. or 2s. per year per

member), the General Federation is able to recoup to its constituent

societies 2s. 6d. or 5s. per week per member affected towards their

several expenditures upon disputes. Beginning with 44 societies,

having a total membership of 343,000, it steadily increased the number

of its adherents until, in 1913, it had affiliated as many as 150

societies, having at that date 884,291 members. Since that time the

number of societies has dropped to 141 in 1919; but their increase

in membership had raised the aggregate affiliation to 1,215,107, the

largest ever recorded. The General Federation, whilst suffering for the

past seven years from an arrest of growth, has to its credit twenty

years’ success in surmounting the difficulties which have destroyed

every previous attempt of the kind, and its prudent management is shown

by the fact that it was able, from its normal revenue, to discharge

all its obligations down to 1905, and to accumulate a reserve of

£119,656. In that year the members rashly insisted on a reduction of

the contribution by one-third, not foreseeing the outburst of disputes

in 1908-9, which caused the Federation to pay out for 638 disputes

no less than £122,778, and necessitated in 1913 the doubling of the

contribution. Since that date, in spite of payments to societies

averaging £1500 every week of the year, the Federation has not only

met its engagements, but also built up a reserve exceeding a quarter

of a million sterling. In 1911 it formed an Approved Society under the

National Insurance Act, with the object of relieving the separate Trade

Unions, and notably the thousand small ones, from the onerous task of

separately administering the Act, and to ensure that their members did

not go off to the Industrial Insurance Companies, an effort which has

failed to attract more than a few thousand members. An extension of

the effort to the provision of death benefits, by the formation of a

Friendly Society section in 1913, has proved scarcely more successful.

It must be recognised that during the past six or seven years the

Federation has lost favour with important sections of the Trade Union

world. It was probably inevitable that its inclusion of small sectional

societies should eventually bring it into conflict with the larger

Unions by whom such societies are often regarded as illegitimate

competitors. Grounds of this kind may be assigned for the secession

of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Amalgamated Society

of Tailors in 1915; and for the powerful hostility shown since 1913

by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. But this feeling has been

accentuated by a growing resentment of the part played by the General

Federation--not unconnected with the forceful personality of the

General Secretary--first in international relations, and secondly in

the representation of Trade Union opinion to the Government and to the

public.

The General Federation, from its very establishment, affiliated

itself to the International Trade Union Federation, which aimed at

the collection and publication of statistics of Trade Unionism all

over the world by an International Trade Union Secretariat, and at

the mutual interchange of Trade Union information. For the first

fifteen years of its existence this action of the General Federation

was not objected to, although the fact that it represented only 25

to 30 per cent of British Trade Unionism impaired the value of its

statistical contributions. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades

Union Congress, which might well have undertaken the task, long ignored

its international interests; but during the Great War increasingly

resented the appearance of the General Federation as the representative

of British Trade Unionism, and especially the almost continuous

negotiations between its secretary, Mr. Appleton, and Mr. Gompers, the

Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and with M. Jouhaux, the

Secretary of the _Confédération Générale du Travail_ of France, along

lines not consistent with those of the Labour Party and the Trades

Union Congress. When, in 1918, attempts were made to reconstitute the

International Federation of Trade Unions, the Parliamentary Committee

claimed at first to be itself the representative of Great Britain; but

presently compromised on a joint and equal representation by the two

bodies.

But more serious than the question of international representation was

the resentment at the ever-widening range of subjects at home on which

Mr. Appleton, the Management Committee, and the Conferences of the

General Federation claimed to voice the feelings of Organised Labour.

It was urged that the Federation was formed exclusively for the purpose

of mutually reinsuring Strike Benefit, and that it had accordingly no

mandate, and did nothing but weaken the Trade Union forces, both in the

narrow field of the conditions of the wage contract, and on the broader

issues of Labour’s political aspirations, whenever it entered into

rivalry with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress

on the one hand, or with the Labour Party on the other. It looks as if

the General Federation must in future either restrict itself to the

limited range of its original purpose, or else run the risk of being

financially weakened by the secession of influential Trade Unions,

which will not permanently remain affiliated to all three national

bodies, when finding these speaking on the same subjects with different

voices.

TRADES COUNCILS

Of another form of loose federation of the branches of all the Trade

Unions within a given area we have already described the origin and the

development in the local Trades Councils. These have gone on increasing

in number, much more than in strength, until in 1920 we estimate that

more than 500 are in existence, with an aggregate affiliated membership

running into several millions of Trade Unionists. The character of

their active membership, their functions, and their proceedings have

remained much as we described them thirty years ago; but they have,

on the whole, increased in strength and local influence, as well as

in numbers and membership. They were, as we shall presently mention,

somewhat arbitrarily excluded in 1895 from the Trades Union Congress,

of which they were actually the originators; and although they have

since joined in various provincial federations of Trades Councils,[634]

these have never acquired any great strength, and do little more than

arrange for co-operation in local demonstrations. An attempt to form a

National Federation of Trades Councils did not succeed. On the other

hand, as we shall describe in Chapter XI., the Trades Councils were,

from its establishment in 1900, admitted, equally with Trade Unions,

as constituents of the Labour Representation Committee (now the Labour

Party), and whether as Trades Councils, or (notably with the smaller

ones) in their new form of “Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties,”

they are coming slowly to form its geographical basis. It is more and

more on the political side that they are in some degree succeeding in

uniting the energies of the Trade Unions of a particular town. This

is especially the case so far as municipal politics are concerned.

They have, for instance, been the main force in securing the general

adoption of the Fair Wages Clause, and in furthering the election of

Labour Candidates to local governing bodies. But they are rigidly

excluded from all participation in the government or trade policy

of the Unions; and, so far as Trade Unionism itself is concerned,

their direct influence on questions of national scope is not great.

Consisting, as in the main they do, of the delegates elected by

branches of national societies, they are hampered by the narrow limits

of the branch autonomy. For in trade matters the branch can bring to

the Council no power which it does not itself possess, whilst towards

any action involving expense by the Council it can, in many Unions,

contribute only the voluntary extra-subscriptions of its members.

During the present century, however, many Unions have started paying

from central funds the affiliation fees of their branches to Trades

Councils. Down to the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, the

resources of the Councils accordingly seldom sufficed for more than the

hire of a room to meet in,[635] the necessary postage and stationery,

and the payment of a few pounds a year for the “loss of time” of their

principal officers. In no case except London does a Trades Council as

such, even in 1920, pay a “full-time” salary, so as to command the

whole time of a single salaried official, though the Trades Councils of

cities like Glasgow, Manchester, and Bradford have salaried secretaries

who have other duties; and where the Trades Council is combined with

the Local Labour Party it is more and more coming to have the services

of a Registration Officer or Election Agent, whose salary is usually

provided as part of the election expenses of the Labour candidate.

For a long time it could hardly be said that the Trades Councils

enjoyed even the moral support of the great Unions. The central

executives of the national societies were apt to view with suspicion

and jealousy the existence of governing bodies in which they were not

directly represented. The local branches, if not actually forbidden,

were not encouraged to adhere to what might conceivably become a rival

authority. The strong county Unions frequently stood aloof unless they

were allowed an overwhelming representation. One of the notable changes

of the present century has been the diminution of this jealousy of the

Trades Councils. We know of no case in which branches are now forbidden

to join a Trades Council. In most cases, although permission may have

to be obtained from the Executive Council or Committee, it is nowadays

readily granted, and with the recognition of the need for political

action, between 1901 and 1913, came positive encouragement to the

branches to affiliate to the Trades Councils of their localities.[636]

It remains, however, true in 1920 as in 1890 that the Trades Councils

do not include the national leaders of the Trade Union world. The

salaried officials of the old-established societies seldom take part

in their proceedings. The London Trades Council, for instance, the

classic meeting-place of the Junta, has long since ceased to be able

to count among its delegates the General Secretaries of the Engineers,

Bricklayers, Railwaymen, Steel-smelters, or of any other of the great

Societies having their head offices in London. The powerful coterie

of cotton officials forms no part of the Manchester Trades Council.

Of the boilermakers, neither the General Secretary nor any one of the

nine District Delegates is usually to be found on a Trades Council.

The Miners’ Agents are notorious for abstention from the Councils in

their localities. This, however, is due nowadays, whatever may once

have been the reason, principally to the enormous additions to the work

of all the salaried officials of the Trade Union world, which make it

impossible for the majority of them to attend Trades Council meetings.

The Trades Councils now serve as a useful training-ground, wider than

that of the Trade Union Branch, for those whom we have elsewhere

described as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement, from whose

ranks nearly all the Trade Union leaders emerge.

Apart from their constant activity in municipal politics, and their

energetic support of the Labour Party in all elections, the Trades

Councils have, in the present century, considerably increased in

usefulness. They have given valuable assistance in Trade Union

propaganda, alike within their own districts and in the adjacent rural

districts. No small part of the increase in Trade Union membership,

notably among nondescript workers in the towns, and the agricultural

labourers in the country, is to be ascribed to the constant work and

support of some of the more active among them. They have done much to

appease quarrels among the local branches of different Unions, and they

are occasionally able to intervene successfully as arbitrators.[637]

Even without formal arbitration they bring warring parties together.

They nominate working-class representatives to many local committees

and conferences, and serve, in this way, as useful links with public

administration. Some of them have, of recent years, done a great deal

to promote the better education of the artisan class. They affiliate to

the Workers’ Educational Association or the Labour College, and support

its classes; they arrange public meetings and obtain outside speakers;

they affiliate to the Labour Research Department, which has a special

“Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties Section”; they subscribe to

the travelling library of book-boxes maintained by the Fabian Society;

they frequently issue their own monthly bulletin of Trade Union and

Labour news, or journal of local government information, or at least

their annual _Year-Book_; and they act as distributing centres for the

nationally published pamphlets and leaflets--sometimes even for the

more popular books on Labour questions.[638] They have come, in several

centres, to form, by Joint Councils, an indispensable connecting link

between the Trade Union and Co-operative Movements, and they serve,

more than any other agency, as the cement between the local branches of

these two movements and the Labour Party itself. To what extent they

are destined, in their character of constituent members of the Labour

Party, sometimes actually combined with Local Labour Parties (in the

latter cases with the inclusion, since 1918, of a section of individual

members, Trade Unionists or others, “workers by hand or by brain”),

to develop an effective political organisation, drawing together the

whole of the supporters of the Labour Party in each Parliamentary

constituency, remains yet to be demonstrated.

THE TRADES UNION CONGRESS

But the most extensive federation of the Trade Union world is to-day,

as it has always been, the Trades Union Congress, which could count in

September 1919 an affiliated membership of more than five and a quarter

millions, a number never paralleled in this or any other country. We

have described in previous chapters the origin and development of this

federal body, its uses in drawing together the scattered Trade Union

forces, and its failure either to help in the solution of the problems

of industrial organisation or to give an intellectual lead to the rank

and file.[639]

We drew attention in the first edition of this book in 1894 to the

weakness of the organisation of this imposing annual Congress; and,

from 1895 onward, certain changes have been successively made in its

constitution and procedure, not always, as we think, for the better.

At the Norwich Congress in 1894 the Parliamentary Committee, which the

Congress annually elects as its executive, was charged by a resolution

proposed by W. J. Davis to consider the amendment of the Standing

Orders, and to make the amended orders applicable to the next Congress.

On the authority of this ambiguous resolution, which seems to have had

in view only the establishment of Grand Committees to deal with the

multiplicity of resolutions on the annual agenda, the Parliamentary

Committee, of which the Chairman was then John Burns, M.P., decided

forthwith to expel all the Trades Councils from the Congress, to

make obligatory the “vote by card” according, not to the number of

delegates, but to the aggregate membership of each Union, and to

confine the delegates rigidly to the contemporary salaried officers and

the members of Trade Unions actually working at their crafts--thereby

excluding not only the veteran Henry Broadhurst, M.P., with John Burns

himself, but also Keir Hardie, Tom Mann, and other leaders of the new

movement that was seeking to make Trade Unionism a political force.

Who, exactly, was responsible for this _coup d’état_ was not officially

revealed. It was said, with some authority, that James Mawdsley, the

rough and forceful secretary of the Cotton-spinners, was at the bottom

of the move, and that he made use of the personal rivalry between Henry

Broadhurst and John Burns to get them both, and also the rebellious

element from the Trades Councils, which all three disliked, excluded

from future Congresses.[640] The Congress at Cardiff in 1895 was

very angry, and, in effect, rebuked the Parliamentary Committee, but

allowed the new Standing Orders to be confirmed on the newly adopted

“card vote.” In so far as the intention was to keep the new ideas out

of Congress, the result was plainly a failure, as within four years

(to be described in Chapter XI.) there was a majority in Congress

for the creation of the independent organisation entitled the Labour

Representation Committee, which became in due course the present Labour

Party. The effect was merely to weaken the intellectual influence on

the Trade Union world of the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee.

With this exception of the exclusion of the Trades Councils, and of the

outstanding personalities whom they occasionally sent as delegates,

the visitor to the Trades Union Congress in 1919 would have found very

little difference between it and the Congresses of thirty years before,

except for an increase in the size of the gathering and in the number

of members represented; and, as must be added, an all-round improvement

in the education and manners, especially of the younger delegates. As

an institution it can hardly be said to have shown, between 1890 and

1917 at least, any development at all.

It must be admitted that, with all its shortcomings, the Congress,

which has now for over fifty years continued to meet annually in some

industrial centre, serves many useful purposes. It is, to begin with,

an outward and visible sign of that persistent sentiment of solidarity

which has throughout the whole of the past century distinguished the

working class. Composed of delegates from all the great national and

county Unions and an increasing number of local societies, and largely

attended by the salaried officials, the Congress, unlike the Trades

Councils, is really representative (except for the absence of most

of the political side of its organisation) of all the elements of the

Trade Union world. Hence its discussions reveal, both to the Trade

Union Civil Service and to party politicians, the movement of opinion

among all sections of Trade Unionists, and, through them, of the great

body of the wage-earners. Moreover, the week’s meeting gives a unique

opportunity for friendly intercourse between the representatives of the

different trades, and thus leads frequently to joint action or wider

federations. Nevertheless the Congress remains, as we have described it

in its early years, rather a parade of the Trade Union forces than a

genuine Parliament of Labour.[641]

All the incidental circumstances tend to accentuate the parade

features of Congress at the expense of its legislative capacity. The

Mayor and Corporation of the city in which it is held are frequently

permitted to give a public welcome to the delegates, and to hold a

sumptuous reception in their honour. The Strangers’ Gallery is full

of interested observers, Distinguished foreigners, representatives of

Government departments, “fraternal delegates” from America and the

Continent, and from the Co-operative Union and the National Union of

Teachers, inquisitive politicians, and popularity-hunting ministers

sit through every day’s proceedings. The press-table is crowded with

reporters from all the principal newspapers of the kingdom, whilst

the local organs vie with each other in bringing out special editions

containing verbatim reports of each day’s discussions. But what more

than anything else makes the Congress a holiday demonstration instead

of a responsible deliberative assembly is its total lack of legislative

power. The delegates are well aware that Congress resolutions on

“subjects” have no binding effect on their constituents, and therefore

do not take the trouble to put them in practicable form, or even to

make them consistent one with another. From the outset the proceedings

are unbusiness-like. Much of the first day is consumed in pure routine

and a lengthy inaugural address from the President, who has been

since 1900 always the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of

the preceding year. The rest of the agenda consists of resolutions

sent in by the various Unions and brought higgledy-piggledy before

the Congress in an order determined by the chances of the ballot.

These resolutions are subjected to no selection or revision beyond an

attempt by subcommittees to merge in one the several proposals on each

subject. The delegates have at their disposal about twenty-five hours

to discuss every imaginable subject, ranging from the nationalisation

of the means of production down to the prohibition of one carter

driving two vehicles at a time. To enable even a minority of those

present to speak for or against the proposals, each speaker is limited

to five, or perhaps to three minutes, a rule which is more or less

rigidly enforced. But, in spite of this vigorous application of the

closure, the President is seldom able to get the business through,

and has frequently as much as he can do to maintain order. The

Standing Orders Committee is entirely taken up with its mechanical

business, and is not authorised, any more than is the Parliamentary

Committee itself, to formulate a programme for the consideration of

the delegates. Nor does the Congress receive much guidance from

experienced officials of the old-established Unions. Whether from a

good-natured desire to let the private members have their turn at

figuring in the newspapers, or from a somewhat cynical appreciation

of the fruitlessness of Congress discussions, many of them habitually

lie low, and seldom speak except to defend themselves against attacks.

Moreover, they are busily engaged, both in and out of Congress hours,

in arranging for the election of themselves or their friends on the

Parliamentary Committee, which has hitherto always been governed by

mutual “bargaining” for votes.[642] When the four days’ talk draws near

to an end, many of the resolutions on the agenda are still undisposed

of. On the Saturday morning, when most of the delegates have started

for home, a thin meeting hurries rapidly through the remainder of

the proposals, speeches are reduced to sixty seconds each, and the

Congress adopts a score of important resolutions in a couple of hours.

From first to last there is no sign of a “Front Bench” of responsible

leaders. As a business meeting the whole function of the Congress is

discharged in the election of the Parliamentary Committee, to which

the representation of the Trade Union world for the ensuing year is

entrusted.

In the first edition of this book, in 1894, we gave a description of

the work of the Parliamentary Committee which it is interesting to

recall:

The duties of the Parliamentary Committee have never been

expressly defined by Congress, and it will easily be

understood that resolutions of the kind we have described

afford but little guidance for practical work. But there is

a general understanding that the Committee is to watch over

the political interests of its constituents, in much the

same way as the Parliamentary Committee of a town council

or a railway company. It is obvious that, in the case of

the Trade Union world, such a mandate covers a wide field.

The right of Free Association, won by Allan, Applegarth,

Odger, and their allies, is now a past issue, but the Trade

Union interest in legislation has, with the advance of

Democracy, extended to larger and more complicated problems.

The complete democratisation of the political machinery,

the duty of the Government to be a model employer,

the further regulation of private enterprise through

perfected factory legislation, the public administration

of monopolies, are all questions in which the Trade Union

world of to-day considers itself keenly interested. To

these distinctly labour issues must be added such interests

of the non-propertied class as the incidence of taxation,

the public provision for education and recreation, and the

maintenance of the sick and the aged. We have here an amount

of Parliamentary business far in excess of that falling upon

the Parliamentary Committee of any ordinary town council or

railway company. To examine all bills, public or private,

introduced into Parliament that may possibly affect any of

the foregoing Trade Union interests; to keep a constant

watch on the administration of the public departments; to

scrutinise the Budget, the Education Code, and the Orders

of the Local Government Board; to bring pressure to bear on

the Ministry of the day, so as to mould the Queen’s Speech

into a Labour Programme; to promote independent Bills on all

the subjects upon which the Government refuses to legislate;

and, lastly, to organise that persistent “lobbying” of

Ministers and private members which finally clinches a

popular demand--all this constitutes a task which would tax

the energies of half a dozen highly trained Parliamentary

agents devoting their whole time to their clients. This

is the work which the Trade Union Congress delegates

to a committee of busy officials, all absorbed in the

multifarious details of their own societies, and served only

by a Secretary who is paid for a small part of his time, and

who accordingly combines the office with other duties.[643]