The whole organisation is so absurdly inadequate to the

task, that the Committee can hardly be blamed for giving up

any attempt to keep pace with the work. The members leave

their provincial headquarters fifteen or twenty times a year

to spend a few hours in the little offices at 19 Buckingham

Street, Strand, in deliberating upon such business as their

Secretary brings before them. Preoccupied with the affairs

of their societies, and unversed in general politics, they

either confine their attention to the interests of their

own trades, or look upon the fortnightly trip to London as

a pleasant recreation from hard official duties. In the

intervals between the meetings the Secretary struggles with

the business as best he can, with such clerical help as he

can afford to pay for out of his meagre allowance. Absorbed

in his own Parliamentary duties, for the performance of

which his constituents pay him a salary, he can devote

to the general interests of the Trade Union world only

the leavings of his time and attention. It is therefore

not surprising to learn that the agenda laid before the

Parliamentary Committee, instead of covering the extensive

field indicated by the resolutions of the Congress, is

habitually reduced to the barest minimum. The work annually

accomplished by the Committee during the last few years

has, in fact, been limited to a few deputations to the

Government, two or three circulars to the Unions, a little

consultation with friendly politicians, and the drafting

of an elaborate report to Congress, describing, not their

doings, but the legislation and other Parliamentary

proceedings of the session. The result is that the executive

committee of the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association

and the Miners’ Federation exercised a far more potent

influence in the lobby than the Committee representing the

whole Trade Union world; whilst such expert manipulators as

Mr. John Burns, Mr. Havelock Wilson, or Mr. George Howell,

can point to more reforms effected in a single session than

the Parliamentary Committee has lately accomplished during a

whole Parliament.

It is therefore not surprising that there exists in the

Trade Union world a growing feeling of irritation against

the Parliamentary Committee. In each successive Congress

the Committee, instead of taking the lead, finds itself

placed on its defence. But it is obvious that Congress

itself is to blame. The members of the Committee, including

the Secretary, are men of quite as sterling character and

capacity as a board of railway directors or a committee

of town councillors. But whereas a railway company or a

town council places at the disposal of its Parliamentary

Committee the whole energies of a specially trained town

clerk or solicitor, and allows him, moreover, to call to

his aid as many expert advisers as he thinks fit, the

Trades Union Congress expects the Parliamentary affairs of

a million and a half members to be transacted by a staff

inferior to that of a third-rate Trade Union. At one period,

it is true, the leaders of the Trade Union world as a whole

successfully conducted a long and arduous Parliamentary

campaign. We have described in a previous chapter the

momentous legislative revolution in the status of Trade

Unionism which was effected between 1867 and 1875. But the

Conference of Amalgamated Trades, and its successors the

Parliamentary Committee, had in these years at their command

the freely given services of such a galaxy of legal and

Parliamentary talent as Mr. Frederic Harrison, Professor

E. S. Beesly, Mr. Henry Crompton, Mr. Thomas (now Judge)

Hughes, Messrs. Godfrey and Vernon Lushington, and Mr. (now

Justice) R. S. Wright. The objection felt by the present

generation of Trade Unionists to be beholden to middle-class

friends is not without a certain validity. But if the Trade

Union Congress wants its Parliamentary business done it

must, at any rate, provide such a salary as will secure the

full services of the ablest man in the movement, equip his

office with an adequate number of clerks, and authorise the

Parliamentary Committee to retain such expert professional

assistance as may from time to time be required.

Such was the position as we saw it in 1894. The Trades Union Congress

did not in any important respect improve its organisation, nor equip

its Parliamentary Committee with any adequate staff. Its failure to

cope with the Parliamentary business in which the Trade Union world

was interested became more and more manifest; and the discontent was

increased by the disinclination felt by many of the leading members of

the Committee for the larger aspirations and more independent attitude

in politics that marked the active spirits of the rank and file of

Trade Union membership. All this co-operated to produce the vote of

the 1899 Congress in favour of some definite step to increase the

number of Labour Members in the House of Commons, out of which sprang

the independent organisation subsequently known as the Labour Party,

which we shall describe in Chapter XI. But although the Trades Union

Congress thus created, at the very end of the nineteenth century, a

separate political organisation for the Trade Union world, into which

the steadily increasing political activity of the Trade Unions has

since flowed, the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee made no

change in their own work. There has accordingly continued to be the

same stream, year after year, of miscellaneous resolutions before

Congress, 99 per cent of them dealing with political issues, involving

either legislation or a change of Government policy, resolutions which

have continued to be presented and discussed without any regard to

their place in any consistent programme for the Trade Union world as

a whole. The Parliamentary Committee has continued to regard itself

almost entirely as a Parliamentary Committee, just as if the Trade

Unions had not united in a distinct political organisation and had

not created their own Parliamentary Labour Party. The futile annual

deputations to Ministers have continued to present to them the crude

resolutions of the Trades Union Congress, without regard to the

contemporary situation in the House of Commons, or the action taken by

the Parliamentary Labour Party, and without taking into account in what

relation they stand to the political programme of the Trade Union world

as formulated, year by year, in the Conferences of the Labour Party.

Meanwhile the essentially industrial work of the national organisation

of Trade Unions has continued to be neglected. Both the Trades Union

Congress and the Parliamentary Committee have shown the greatest

disinclination to tackle such essentially Trade Union problems as

those presented by the existence in the same trade of competing Trade

Unions;[644] by the formation of separate Unions on overlapping and

mutually inconsistent bases; by the growing rivalry between the warring

conceptions of organisation by craft and organisation by industry; by

the increasing failure of the membership of each branch to correspond

with the staffs of the separate gigantic establishments characteristic

of the present day; by the “rank and file movement,” demanding a

greater direct control of workshop conditions than can easily be

made compatible with the centralisation of policy in the national

executives; by the development of the “Shop Stewards’” organisation;

by the spread in different industries of systems of “payment by

results,” unsafeguarded by the necessary adaptations of the Standard

Rate and Collective Bargaining; by the tendency of the employers to

make deductions from the Standard Rate when it suits them to take on

individuals or new classes of workers whom they declare to be inferior,

whether women or boys, old men or partially incapacitated workers of

any sort; and by the introduction of “Scientific Management.”[645]

During the whole of this century, in fact, the Parliamentary Committee

of the Trades Union Congress, and the Congress itself, have failed

to grapple with the work that calls out to be done by some national

organisation of the Trade Union world. After allowing to be created,

on the one hand, the General Federation of Trade Unions, abandoning to

it the whole function of insurance, together with the representation

of British Trade Unionism in the International Federation of Trade

Unions, and, on the other, the Labour Party, with its inevitable

absorption of the political activity of the Trade Union world, the

Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress has failed to

recognise, and to concentrate upon, the sphere that it had left to

itself, namely, to become the national organ for the improvement and

development of British Trade Unionism in its industrial aspect. Whilst

the Trades Union Congress has continued anxiously and nervously to

abstain from any attempt to demarcate the spheres of rival Unions or

to improve their mutual relations, action which would have brought the

Parliamentary Committee dangerously into conflict with one or other of

its constituents, and has confined its attention as much as ever to the

statutory and governmental reforms which its various sections desired,

it has been progressively overshadowed, on the political side, by the

rise of the Labour Party, to be described in a subsequent chapter.

Towards the end of 1919 the discontent of the Trade Union world

with the position and attitude of the Parliamentary Committee came

to a head. The sudden railway strike, described in this chapter,

revealed the lack of any organ of co-ordination in industrial

movements which inevitably affected the whole Trade Union Movement.

The Parliamentary Committee itself laid before a special Trades Union

Congress in December 1919 a report declaring that “the need has long

been recognised for the development of more adequate machinery for

the co-ordination of Labour activities, both for the movement as a

whole, and especially for its industrial side. Again and again the

lack of co-ordination has resulted, not only in the overlapping of

administrative work, but also in unnecessary internal and other

disputes, involving vast financial and moral damage to the whole Labour

Movement. To do away with some of this overlapping and to provide means

of co-ordinating the work of certain sections was the object with which

the Triple Industrial Alliance was founded by the Miners, Railwaymen,

and Transport Workers, and the same object is behind the numerous steps

towards closer unity which have been taken in various industries and

groups. The Negotiating Committee, hastily improvised to deal with the

situation created by the railway strike this autumn, was generally felt

to have fulfilled, however imperfectly, a vital need of Labour; but it

is clear that it ought not to have been necessary to create a new and

temporary body to do this work; the necessary machinery should have

been already in existence in the form of a really effective central

co-ordinating body for the movement as a whole.

“It appears to us that the body which is required should and must

be developed out of the existing organisation of the Trades Union

Congress and out of its closer co-operation with other sections of the

working-class movement. At present, the Standing Orders do not permit

the Parliamentary Committee to undertake the work which is required.

Indeed, its functions, as they are now defined, are in great measure a

survival from a previous period, when the chief duties of the Congress

were political, and there existed no separate political organisation

to express the policy and objects of Labour. We accordingly suggest

that the whole functions and organisation of the Parliamentary

Committee demand revision, with a view to developing out of it a real

co-ordinating body for the industrial side of the whole Trade Union

Movement. It is also necessary to take into account the relation of the

reorganised Central Industrial Committee to the other sections of the

movement, and especially to the Labour Party and to the Co-operative

Movement.

“If a better central organisation could be developed both on the

industrial side and by the closer joint working with the other wings of

the working-class movement, a vast development of the very necessary

work of publicity, information, and research would at once become

possible. The research, publicity, and legal departments now working

for the movement require co-ordination and extension equally with its

industrial and political organisation. The research, publicity, and

legal work now done by the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party,

and the Labour Research Department must be co-ordinated and greatly

enlarged in close connection with the development of the executive

machinery of the movement.”

The proposal did not secure the approval of the Miners’ Federation, but

the special Congress, by a very large majority, passed the following

resolution:

“That in view of the imperative need and demand for a central

co-ordinating body representative of the whole Trade Union Movement and

capable of efficiently dealing with industrial questions of national

importance, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to revise the

Standing Orders of Congress in such manner as is necessary to secure

the following changes in the functions and duties of the Executive body

elected by Congress:

“(1) To substitute for the Parliamentary Committee a Trades

Union Congress General Council, to be elected annually by

Congress.

“(2) To prepare a scheme determining the composition and

methods of election of the General Council.

“(3) To make arrangements for the development of

administrative departments in the offices of the General

Council, in the direction of securing the necessary

officials, staff, and equipment to secure an efficient Trade

Union centre.

“Further, in order to avoid overlapping in the activity of

working-class organisations, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed

to consult with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement, with a

view to devising a scheme for the setting up of departments under joint

control, responsible for effective national and international service

in the following and any other necessary directions:

“(_a_) _Research_: To secure general and statistical

information on all questions affecting the worker as

producer and consumer by the co-ordination and development

of existing agencies.

“(_b_) _Legal advice_ on all questions affecting the

collective welfare of the members of working-class

organisations.

“(_c_) _Publicity_, including preparation of suitable

literature dealing with questions affecting the economic,

social, and political welfare of the people; with machinery

for inaugurating special publicity campaigns to meet

emergencies of an industrial or political character.”

THE OFFICERS OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

If we survey the growth of the British Trade Union Movement during the

past thirty years, what is conspicuous is that, whilst the Movement

has marvellously increased in mass and momentum, it has been marked

on the whole by inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and

in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and persistency

of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our

opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not

secured anything like the results, either in the industrial or in the

political field, that the individual sacrifices and efforts in their

cause might have brought about. This deficiency in the brain-work of

successful organisation is very marked in the various sections of the

building trades, with their chaos of separate societies, and in the

engineering industry, with its persistence of competing Unions formed

on inconsistent bases, its lack of uniformity in Standard Rates, and

its failure to devise any plan of safeguarding Collective Bargaining in

the various systems of “Payment by Results.” But it has been equally

apparent in the incapacity of the Trade Union Movement as a whole to

establish any central authority to prevent overlapping organisations

and demarcation disputes, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various

sections of workers towards a higher standard of life and greater

control over the conditions of their working lives. The British

workmen, it must be said, have not become aware of the absolute need

for what we may call Labour Statesmanship. They have not yet learnt

how, either in their separate Trade Unions or in the Labour Movement

as a whole, to attract and train, to select and retain in office, to

accord freedom of initiative to and yet to control, a sufficient staff

of qualified officials capable not merely of individual leadership, but

also of well devised “team play” in the long-drawn-out struggle of the

wage-earning class for its “place in the sun.” To this constant falling

short of the reasonably expected achievements is, we think, due the

perpetual see-saw in Trade Union policy: the Trade Unionists of one

decade relying principally on political action, to the neglect of the

industrial weapon, whilst those of a succeeding decade, temporarily

disillusioned with political action, rush wildly into strikes and

neglect the ballot-box. This change of feeling is due each time to the

failure of the results to come up to expectation. We shall understand

some of the reasons for this shortcoming if we examine how the Trade

Union Movement is, in fact, officered.

The affairs, industrial and political, of the six million Trade

Unionists, enrolled in possibly as many as fifty thousand local

branches or lodges (including a thousand independent small local

societies), are administered by perhaps 100,000 annually elected

branch officials and shop stewards. These may be regarded as the

non-commissioned officers of the Movement; and it is fundamentally

on their sobriety and personal integrity, combined with an intimate

knowledge of their several crafts and a steadiness of judgement,

that the successful conduct of the branch business depends. They

continue to work at their trades, and receive only a few pounds

a year for all their onerous and sometimes dangerous work. It is

these non-commissioned officers of the Trade Union army who keep the

Trade Union organisation alive. But they have neither the training,

nor the leisure, nor even the opportunity, so long as they remain

non-commissioned officers, working at their trades, to formulate a

detailed policy, or to supply the day-by-day executive leadership to

the particular Trade Union, or to the Trade Union Movement. For the

work of translating into action, industrial or political, the desires

or convictions of the whole body of the members, the Trade Union world

necessarily depends, in the main, on its salaried officers, who devote

the whole of their time to the service of the Movement, in one or other

capacity. Such a whole-time salaried staff was slow to be formed. In

1850 it did not exist at all. It probably did not in 1860 number as

many as a hundred throughout the whole kingdom. In 1892, in the first

edition of this book, we put it approximately at 600. In 1920, with a

fourfold growth in membership, and (under the National Insurance Act) a

vast increase in the office and financial business of the Trade Unions,

we estimate the total number of the salaried officers of all the Trade

Unions and their federations (not including mere shorthand typists

and office-boys) at three or four thousand, of whom perhaps one-tenth,

in or out of Parliament, are engaged exclusively on election and other

political work. But even on the industrial side, Trade Union officials

differ considerably in the work they have to do, and the differences in

function result in marked varieties of type.

We have first the salaried officials of the skilled trades. They are

broadly distinguished from the officers of the Labourers’ Unions by

the fact that they are invariably men who have worked at the crafts

they represent, and who have usually served their society as branch

secretaries. We may distinguish among them two leading types, the

Administrator of Friendly Benefits, and the Trade Official.

To the type of Administrator of Friendly Benefits, the school of

William Allan, belong most of the General and Assistant Secretaries at

the head offices of the great Trade Friendly Societies organisations

in which the mass of routine, financial, and other office business has

become so great that only the ablest men succeed in rising above it.

Owing to the continued increase in membership of the principal Unions,

to their tendency to amalgamate into larger and larger aggregations,

to the constant extension of friendly benefits, and since 1911 to

the enormous addition to the work made by the National Insurance

Act, the administrative staffs of the Unions have had to be doubled

and quadrupled. But the Trade Union official of this type, however

great may be his nominal position, has, during the past thirty years,

come to exercise less and less influence on the Trade Union world.

Rigidly confined to his office, he becomes in most cases a painstaking

clerk, and rises at the best to the level of the shrewd manager of an

insurance company. He passes his life in investigating the claims of

his members to the various benefits, and in upholding, at all hazard of

unpopularity, a sound financial system of adequate contributions and

moderate benefits. Questions of trade policy interest him principally

so far as they tend to swell or diminish the number of his members in

receipt of “Out of Work Pay.” He is therefore apt to be more intent on

getting unemployed members off the books than on raising the Standard

Rate of wages or decreasing the length of the Normal Day. For the same

reason he proves a tenacious champion of his members’ rights in all

quarrels about overlap and demarcation of work; and it may happen that

he finds himself more often engaged in disputes with rival Unions than

with employers. He represents the most conservative element in Trade

Union life. On all occasions he sits tight, and votes solid for what he

conceives to be the official or moderate party.

More influential in Trade Union politics is the salaried officer of

the other type. The Trade Official, as we have called him, is largely

the result of the prevalence, in certain industries, of a complicated

system of “Payment by Results.” We have already described how the

cotton lists on the one hand and the checkweigher clause on the other

called into existence a specially trained class, which has since been

augmented by the adoption of piecework lists in boot and shoemaking

and other industries. The officers of this type are professionals in

the art of Collective Bargaining. They spend their lives in intricate

calculations on technical details, and in conducting delicate

negotiations with the employers or their professional agents. It

matters little whether they are the general secretaries of essentially

trade societies, such as the federal Unions of Cotton-spinners and

Cotton-weavers, or the exclusively trade delegates of societies with

friendly benefits, such as the Steel-smelters, the Boilermakers,

and the Boot and Shoe Operatives. In either case their attention is

almost entirely devoted to the earnings of their members. Alert and

open-minded, they are keen observers of market prices, employers’

profits, the course of international trade, and everything which may

affect the gross product of their industry. They are more acutely

conscious of incompetency, whether in employer or employed, than they

can always express. Supporters of improved processes, new machinery,

and “speeding up,” they would rather see an antiquated mill closed or

an incompetent member discharged than reduce the Standard Rate. Nor

do they confine themselves exclusively to the money wages of their

clients. Among them are to be found the best advocates of legislative

regulation of the conditions of employment, and whilst they have during

the present century fallen somewhat into the background when wider

political issues have come to the fore, the elaboration of the Labour

Code during the past fifty years has been due, in the main, to their

detailed knowledge and untiring pertinacity.

The Trade Official, however, has the defects of his qualities. The

energetic workman, who at about thirty years of age leaves the factory,

the forge, or the mine, to spend his days pitting his brains against

those of shrewd employers and sharp-witted solicitors, has necessarily

to concentrate all his energies upon the limited range of his new

work. As a Branch Secretary, he may have taken a keen interest in the

grievances and demands of other trades besides his own. Soon he finds

his duties incompatible with any such wide outlook. The feeling of

class solidarity, so vivid in the manual working wage-earner, tends

gradually to be replaced by a narrow trade interest. The District

Delegate of the Boilermakers finds it as much as he can do to master

the innumerable and constantly changing details of every variety of

iron-ship, boiler, and bridge building in every port, and even at

every yard. The Investigator of the National Union of Boot and Shoe

Operatives is often hard put to it to estimate accurately the labour

in each of the thousand changing styles of boots, whilst at the same

time keeping pace with ever-increasing complexity both of machinery

and division of labour. The Cotton Official, with his bewildering

lists, throws his whole mind into coping with the infinite variety

of calculations involved in new patterns, increased speed, and every

alteration of count and draw and warp and weft. The Miners’ Agents can

seldom travel beyond the analogous problems of their own industry. Such

a Trade Official, if he has any leisure and energy left at the end of

his exhausting day’s work, broods over larger problems, still special

to his own industry. The Secretary of a Cotton Union finds it necessary

to puzzle his head over the employers’ contention that Bimetallism, or

a new Indian Factory Act, deserves the operatives’ support; or to think

out some way of defeating the evasions of the law against over-steaming

or of the “particulars clause.” The whole staff of the Boilermakers

will be absorbed in considering the effect of the different systems

of apprenticeship in the shipyards, or the proper method of meeting

the ruinously violent fluctuations in shipbuilding. The Miners will be

thinking only of the technical improvement of the conditions of safety

of the mine, or of the way to protect the interests of the hewer in

an “abnormal place.” And the modern Knight of St. Crispin racks his

brains about none of these things, but is wholly concerned with the

evil of home work, and whether the inspection of small workshops would

be more rigidly carried out under the Home Office or under the Town

Council. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Trade Officials

are characterised by an intense and somewhat narrow sectionalism. The

very knowledge of, and absorption in, the technical details of one

particular trade, which makes them such expert specialists, prevents

them developing the higher qualities necessary for the political

leadership of the Trade Union world.

In another class stand the organisers and secretaries of what used

to be called the Labourers’ Unions, and are now styled Unions of

General Workers--a less stable class, numbering in 1892 about two

hundred, and in 1920 possibly ten times as many. In contrast with

the practice of the old-established societies these officers have

at no time been always selected from the ranks of the workers whose

affairs they administer.[646] In “revivalist” times the cause of the

unskilled workers attracts, from the ranks of the non-commissioned

officers of other industries, men of striking capacity and missionary

fervour, such as John Burns and Tom Mann, who organised and led the

dock labourers to victory in 1889. But these men regarded themselves

and were regarded more as apostles to the unconverted than as salaried

officers, and they ceded their posts as soon as competent successors

among their constituents could be found. In the main the unskilled

workmen have had to rely for officers on men drawn from their own

ranks. In not a few cases a sturdy general labourer has proved himself

a first-rate administrator of a great national Union. But it was a

special drawback to these Unions in the early days of their development

that the “failures,” who drift from other occupations into the ranks of

general labour, frequently got elected, on account of their superior

education, to posts in which personal self-control and persistent

industry are all-important. Nor were the duties of an organiser of

unskilled labourers in old days such as developed either regular

habits or business capacity. The absence of any extensive system of

friendly benefits reduced to a minimum the administrative functions

and clerical labour of the head office. The members, for the most

part engaged simply in general labour, and paid by the day or hour,

had no occasion for elaborate piecework lists, even supposing that

their Unions had won that full recognition by the employers which such

arrangements imply. On the other hand, the branches of a Labourers’

Union in those days were, for one reason or another, always crumbling

away; and the total membership was only maintained by perpetually

breaking fresh ground. Hence the greater part of the organiser’s

time was taken up in maintaining the enthusiasm of his members, and

in sweeping in new converts. This involved constant travelling, and

the whirl of excitement implied in an everlasting round of missions in

non-Union districts. The typical organiser of a Labourers’ Union in

1889-94 approximated, therefore, more closely than any other figure in

the Trade Union world, to the middle-class conception of a Trade Union

official. He was, in fact, a professional agitator. He might be a saint

or he might be an adventurer; but he was seldom a man of affairs.[647]

During the past quarter of a century these Unions of Labourers, which

are now better styled Unions of General Workers, have changed in

character, and are now often huge national organisations of financial

stability, administered by men as competent as any in the Trade

Union world. Their officers, who have greatly increased in number,

have elaborated a technique of their own, combining an efficiency in

recruiting with an effective representation of their members’ case in

negotiations with the employers, and before arbitration tribunals,

which, particularly in such influential bodies as the National Union

of General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union,

the Workers’ Union and the National Federation of Women Workers,

brings them much nearer what we have described as the Trade Official

than the typical labourers’ organiser of 1889. The exclusively women’s

Unions, among which the National Federation of Women Workers is the

only one of magnitude, have been exceptionally fortunate in attracting

and retaining women of outstanding capacity--good organisers and

skilled negotiators--who have not only obtained for their members a

remarkable improvement in the conditions of employment, but have,

by their statesmanship, won a position of outstanding influence in

the Trade Union Movement. It is, indeed, important to note that the

accomplished officials of the larger Unions of General Workers, and

not those of women only, have become aware of a diversity of view

between the skilled craftsman with a “vested interest” in his trade,

and the unskilled or, as they prefer to call them, the semi-skilled

or general workers, bent on being considered qualified for any work

which the employer has to give. Hence these officials sometimes take a

larger view of Labour questions than the trade officials of the skilled

crafts. They tend to be in favour of the amalgamation of separate

societies into “One Big Union”; of much more equality of remuneration

among all manual workers; of the “open door” to capacity; of equal

rates for men and women on the same job; and of a levelling up of the

Standard of Life of the lowest section of the workers. This leads them

instinctively to a co-ordinated use of the industrial and the political

weapons.

Some of these officials, however, are paid in a manner which may

exercise an adverse influence on their activity. A new method of

remuneration of the officers of a Trade Union has been devised.

In one case the very able General Secretary of a Union of skilled

craftsmen, whose services have been in the past most valuable to the

trade, is reputed to be paid so much per member per annum, and with

the great increase in membership to be making an income four times

as large as the salaries of the General Secretaries of great Trade

Unions. In another very extensive Union of unskilled and semi-skilled

workers, practically the whole staff is paid “by results,” the Branch

Secretaries, for instance, by rule retaining for themselves “six per

cent on the contributions, levies and fines received from the members

of the Branch on behalf of, and remitted to, the Chief Office”; and

being paid also “a procuration fee of 1s.” for “introducing new

members” into the Approved Society; and for the extra work involved

in disputes, a further “6d. when under 25 members are affected, and

1s. for the first 25 or over; 2s. for the first 50; 6d. per 50 or

part thereof afterwards.” This method of remunerating Trade Union

officials--analogous to that successfully employed by the Industrial

Insurance Companies for their agents--has certain attractions. A fairly

adequate remuneration for the position and work can thus be allotted

to the officer, without its amount being specifically voted by the

members or appearing in the accounts in such a way as to offend the

rank and file by a contrast between their weekly wage for manual labour

and the Standard Rate of what is essentially a different occupation.

It is, however, rightly regarded as a pernicious system. The practice

of “paying by results” is alleged to lead sometimes to reckless

recruiting, to “in and out” Trade Unionism, and even to wholesale

poaching among the membership of other Unions; and it produces in the

Trade Union world a type of “business man” more concerned for numbers

than for raising the Standard of Life of the members he has enrolled,

or for co-operation with other Trade Unions for their common ends.

Quite another type, of more recent introduction, is the Political

Officer of the Trade Union world. He may be merely the Registration

Officer or Election Agent serving the local Labour Party and the

Labour Candidate in a particular constituency; he may be simply a

Labour M.P.; he may be the secretary or staff officer of a great Trade

Union or powerful federation, or, indeed, of the Labour Party itself,

devoting himself to political functions; he may combine with one or

other of these posts, or some other Trade Union office, that of a

Member of Parliament; but he is distinguished from the typical General

Secretary, Trade Official or Labour Organiser--from one or other of

which he has usually developed--by his absorption in the political work

of the Movement, either inside the House of Commons or outside it,

within one constituency or in a wider field. He may not always hold

a political office. A marked feature of the past decade has been the

frequency and the amount of the calls upon the time of the Trade Union

leaders who are not in Parliament, for public service in which their

own Unions have no special concern. The Trade Union official has to

serve on innumerable public bodies, nearly always without pay of any

kind, from local Pension or Food or Profiteering Act Committees, or

the magisterial bench, up to National Arbitration Tribunals, official

Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. Such a man is perpetually

devoting hours every day to the consideration and discussion, and

sometimes to the joint decision, of issues of public character, in

which it is his special function to represent, not the opinions and

interests of the particular Trade Unionists by whom he is paid, but

the opinions and interests of the whole wage-earning class. All this

important work, a twentieth century addition to the functions of the

Trade Union staff, and not alone the increasing calls of Parliament,

is tending more and more to the development of what we have called the

Political Officer of the movement.

These three or four thousand salaried officials of the Trade Union

world, whatever their several types, and whatever the duties to which

they are assigned, are, with insignificant exceptions, all selected

in one way, namely by popular election by the whole body of members,

either of their respective Unions, or of particular districts of those

Unions. They are, in the skilled trades, required to be members of the

Union making the appointment; and in order to gain the suffrages of

their fellow-members they must necessarily have made themselves known

to them in some way. They are, accordingly, selected almost invariably

from among what we have described as the non-commissioned officers

of the Movement, those who are serving or who have served as Branch

Secretaries, or other local officers. They have thus all essentially

the same training--a training which has no more reference to the work

of an administrator of Friendly Benefits than to that of a Political

Officer. What happens is that the popular workman is, by the votes of

his fellow-workers, taken suddenly from the bench, the forge or the

mine, at any age from 30 to 50, with no larger experience than that of

a Branch Official, and put to do the highly specialised work of one

or other of the types that we have described.[648] It is a further

difficulty that such training and experience that an individual Trade

Unionist may have had, and such capacity as he may have shown, whilst

they may secure his election to a salaried office, or his promotion

from one such office to another, will be held to have no bearing on the

question of which office he will be chosen to fill. The popular Branch

Secretary, who has led a successful strike, may be elected as General

Secretary in a head office where his work will be mainly that of the

manager of an insurance company. The successful Trade Official, expert

at negotiating complicated changes in piecework lists, may find himself

elected as the Union’s candidate for Parliament; and will, in due

course, be sent to the House of Commons to deal on behalf of the whole

wage-earning class, with political issues to which he has never given

so much as a thought. The Trade Union secretary, whose daily work has

trained him to the meticulous supervision of the friendly benefits, may

find himself perpetually called away from his office to represent the

interests of Labour as a member of Royal Commissions and Committees of

Enquiry on every imaginable subject.

With such imperfect methods of selection for office, and with so

complete a lack of systematic training for their onerous and important

functions, it is, we think, a matter for surprise that Trade Union

officials should have won a well-deserved reputation for knowledge and

skill in negotiations with employers. But their haphazard selection

and inadequate training are not the only difficulties that they have

to overcome. Trade Union officials are nearly always overworked and

expected to become specialist experts in half-a-dozen techniques; they

are exposed to harassing and demoralising conditions of life, and they

are habitually underpaid. The conditions of employment and the terms

of service which the Trade Unions, out of ignorance, impose on those

who serve them, far from being conducive to efficient administration

and wise leadership, are often disgracefully poor. In November 1919

the National Union of Railwaymen set a notable example in raising

the salaries of their two principal officers to £1000 a year each.

But this is wholly exceptional. Even now, after the great rise in

the cost of living, the salary of the staff officer of an important

and wealthy Trade Union rarely exceeds £400 or £500 a year, without

any provision for any other retiring allowance than the Union’s own

Superannuation Benefit of ten or twelve shillings per week, if such

a benefit exists at all. The average member forgets that what he has

to compare the Secretary’s salary with is not the weekly wage of the

manual working members of the Union, but--on the very doctrine of

the Standard Rate in which they all believe--the remuneration given

by “good employers” for the kind of work that the Secretary has to

perform. When we remember that the modern Trade Union official has to

be constantly travelling and consorting with employers and officials of

much higher standards of expenditure than his own, and when we realise

the magnitude and financial importance of the work that he performs,

the smallness of the salary and the lack of courtesy and amenity

accorded to the office is almost ludicrous. The result is that the able

and ambitious young workman in a skilled trade is not much tempted by

the career, even if he regards it as one of Trade Union leadership,

unless he is (as so many are) an altruistic enthusiast; or unless his

ambitions are ultimately political in character. The able young workman

will both rise more rapidly and enjoy a pleasanter life by eschewing

any ostensible service of his fellow-workmen, and taking advantage

of the eagerness of intelligent employers to discover competent

foremen and managers, nowadays not altogether uninfluenced by the

sub-conscious desire to divert from Trade Unionism to Capitalism the

most active-minded of the proletariat. Nor does the danger to the Trade

Union world end with the refusal of some of its ablest young members

to become Trade Union officials. The inferiority of position, alike in

salary, in dignity and in amenity, to which a Trade Union condemns its

officers, compared with that enjoyed by men of corresponding ability

and function in other spheres, puts a perpetual strain on the loyalty

of Trade Union officials. They are constantly being tempted away from

the service of their fellows by offers of appointments in the business

world, or by Employers’ Associations, or in Government Departments. And

there are other evils of underpayment. A Trade Union official whose

income is insufficient for his daily needs is tempted to make unduly

liberal charges for his travelling expenses, and may well find it more

remunerative to be perpetually multiplying deputations and committee

meetings away from home than to be attending to his duties at the

office. He may be driven to duplicate functions and posts in order to

make a living wage. The darkest side of such a picture, the temptation

to accept from employers or from the Government those hidden bribes

that are decorously veiled as allowances for expenses or temporary

salaries for special posts, is happily one which Trade Union loyalty

and a sturdy sense of working-class honour have hitherto made it seldom

necessary to explore. But such things have not been unknown; and their

underlying cause--the unwise and mean underpayment of Trade Union

officials--deserves the attention of the Trade Union world.

We have so far considered the officials of the Trade Union world merely

as individual administrators. This, indeed, is almost the only way

in which their work is regarded by their members. It is remarkable

how slow the Trade Union world is to recognise the importance,

to administrative or political efficiency, of the constitution

of a hierarchy, a group or a team. Where a great society has a

salaried staff of half-a-dozen to a score of officials--under such

designations as General Secretary, Assistant Secretaries, President,

Members of Executive Council or District Delegates, Organisers or

Investigators--it is almost invariable to find them all separately

elected by the whole body of members, or what is even more destructive

of unity, by different district memberships. We only know of one

example in the Trade Union world--that of the Iron and Steel Trades

Confederation--in which the responsible Executive Committee itself

appoints the official staff upon which the performance of the work

depends. All the salaried officers of a Trade Union, whatever their

designations or functions, can usually claim to have the same, and

therefore equal authority, namely, their direct election by the

members. This results in the lack of any organic relation not only

between the Executive Committee and the District Officers who ought

to be its local agents, but even between the Executive Committee

and the General Secretary and Assistant Secretaries. The Executive

Committee can shunt to purely routine work a General Secretary whom it

dislikes, and an unfriendly General Secretary can practically destroy

the authority of the Executive Committee. In some cases the work of

the office is in practice divided up amongst all the salaried staff,

Executive Councillors, General Secretary, and Assistant Secretaries

indiscriminately, each man doing his own job in the way he thinks

best, and any consultation or corporate decision being reduced to a

minimum. There is, in fact, no guarantee that there will be any unity

of policy within an Executive Committee elected by a dozen different

districts, or between an Executive Committee and its leading officials,

who are elected at different times for different reasons. The members

may choose a majority of reactionary Executive Councillors and

simultaneously a revolutionary General Secretary. In nearly all Unions

any suggestion as to the desirability of adopting the middle-class

device of entrusting a responsible Executive Committee with the power

of choosing its own officers has been resented as undemocratic.[649] In

some Unions the indispensable amount of unity is secured, not without

internal friction, by the presence of some dominant personality, who

may be a secretary or president, or merely a member of the Executive

Committee. The same drawback is seen in the constitutions of such wider

federations as the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. The

result is that the Trade Union Movement has not yet evolved anything in

the nature of Cabinet Government, based on unity of policy among the

chief administrators, nor do we see any approach to the Party System,

which in our national politics alone makes Cabinet Government possible.

It looks as if any Democracy on a vocational basis must inevitably be

dominated by a diversity of sectional interests which does not coincide

with any cleavage in intellectual opinions. From the standpoint of

corporate efficiency the drawback is that the sectional divergencies

are always interfering with the formulation and unhesitating execution

of decisions on wider issues, on which it would be advantageous for

the Movement as a whole, in the interests of all, to have an effective

general will, even if it be only that of a numerical majority.

Finally, it is a great drawback to the Trade Union world that it

possesses no capital city and no central headquarters even in London.

Its salaried officials, on whom it depends for leadership and policy,

are scattered all over the country. The General Secretaries of the

great Trade Friendly Societies and of the Unions of General Workers are

dispersed between London, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen,

Liverpool, and Leicester. The officials of the Cotton Operatives

are quartered in a dozen Lancashire towns, and those of the Miners

in every coalfield. The District Delegates of the Engineering and

Shipbuilding Trades and the organisers of the Dockers and the Seamen

are stationed in all the principal ports. We have seen how little

the Trades Union Congress, meeting once a year for less than a week,

supplies any central organ of consultation or direction. The meeting

in London, every few weeks, of the two or three dozen members of the

Parliamentary Committee and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party

is wholly inadequate for the constant consultation upon policy, the

mutual communication of each other’s immediate projects, and the taking

of decisions of common interest that the present stage of the Trade

Union Movement requires. Probably no single thing would do so much

to increase the efficiency of the Trade Union world as a whole as the

provision of an adequate Central Institute and general office building

in Westminster, at which could be concentrated all the meetings of

national organisations, federations and committees; and which would

make at any rate possible the constant personal communication of all

the different headquarters.[650]

FOOTNOTES:

[599] It is doubtful whether, in any country in the world, even in

Australia or Denmark, there is in 1920 so large a proportion of

the adult male manual workers enrolled in Trade Unions as in the

United Kingdom; and--Ireland being still relatively unorganised

industrially--certainly not so large a proportion as in Great Britain

alone.

The Trade Union Movement in Ireland has, apart from the Irish branches

of British Unions, largely concentrated in the Belfast area, little

connection with that in Great Britain, but its progress during the past

thirty years has been scarcely less remarkable. The Irish railwaymen

have abandoned their attempts at organisation in an Irish Union, and

have lately swarmed into the National Union of Railwaymen to the

number of over 20,000. The engineers in Ireland, whether at Belfast or

elsewhere, are, to the number of 9000, in the Amalgamated Society of

Engineers and other British Unions. The other great Unions have nearly

all their Irish branches. But the great transformation has been in the

foundation and remarkable development of the Transport and General

Workers’ Union, built up by James Connolly and James Larkin, which has

survived both its tremendous Dublin strike of 1913 and the loss of both

its leaders, and claims in 1920 over 100,000 members in 400 branches,

being half the Trade Unionists in all Ireland. The only other Irish

Trade Unions exceeding 5000 members are the Flax Roughers’ Union,

included with other Unions in an Irish Textile Workers’ Federation,

and the Clerical Workers’ Union, together with the Irish Teachers’

Society, which (unlike the National Union of Teachers in England

and the Educational Institute of Scotland) is frankly affiliated

with the (Irish) Labour Party. Scores of other Irish Trade Unions

exist, practically all small, local, and sectional in character, and

almost confined to the ten towns of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick,

Waterford, Dundalk, Derry, Clonmel, Sligo, and Kilkenny. The total

Trade Union membership in Ireland, which thirty years ago was only put

at 40,000, may now exceed 200,000, about one-fifth of which is in and

about Belfast. The Irish Trades Union Congress, established in 1894,

and the Irish Labour Party meet annually.

The Irish Trade Union Movement, emerging from handicraftsmen’s local

clubs, some of them dating from the middle of the eighteenth century,

and monopolist and sectional in policy, has, during the present

century, become fired with nationalist spirit and almost revolutionary

fervour. Its heroes are Michael Davitt, James Connolly, and James

Larkin. The story of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its

extraordinary extension to all grades of wage-earners all over Ireland,

and its sensational strikes in Dublin in 1913-14, is an epic in itself.

Some idea of this development may be gathered from _The Irish Labour

Movement_, by W. P. Ryan, 1919; _Labour in Irish History_, by James

Connolly; _Socialism Made Easy_, by the same (about 1905); the Annual

Reports of the Irish Trades Union Congress since 1895; and those of the

Irish Labour Party.

[600] Statistics of aggregate membership in the past are lacking. But

we suggest that after the transient mass enrolments of 1833-34 had

lapsed, the total membership in Great Britain of such Trade Unions as

survived probably did not reach 100,000. It is doubtful whether, as

late as 1860, there were half a million Trade Unionists. We give in an

Appendix such past statistics as we have found.

[601] _Industrial Democracy_, pp. 38, 92, 103, 123, 258, etc.

[602] The Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives

is (1920) not now a member. A further development of federal complexity

is the formation of a Federation of Kindred Trades connected with the

Export Shipping Industry of Manchester.

An invidious feature, in which the textile industry is unique, is the

appearance during the present century, as the result of a quarrel as

to “political action,” of half-a-dozen separate local Trade Unions

of Roman Catholic weavers, which are united in what is termed the

Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies. These, which are neither

numerous nor of extensive membership, remain outside the Amalgamated

Association of Weavers; and are watchful critics of any proposals,

at the Trades Union Congress (to which they do not seek admission)

or elsewhere, that offend the Roman Catholic Church (notably any

suggestion of “Secular Education,” or educational changes deemed

inimical to the Roman Catholic schools). There is a National Conference

of Catholic Trade Unionists having similar objects.

There was, in 1919, also a Jewish National Labour Council of Great

Britain; and from time to time Unions are formed, especially in the

clothing trade (such as the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors, Machinists, and

Pressers, established 1893), and in baking and cabinetmaking, aiming

at enrolling Jewish workers. But this is not really a religious, or

even primarily a racial, cleavage, but merely sectional organisation,

usually transient, among particular branches of industry which happen

to be principally carried on by Jews. At present most such societies in

the clothing trade have been absorbed in the United Garment Workers’

Trade Union, which, with upwards of 100,000 members, is actively

negotiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Society of Tailors

and Tailoresses (established 1865) and the effective Scottish Operative

Tailors’ and Tailoresses’ Association, with 5000 members, under the

title of the United Tailors and Garment Workers.

[603] A recent case in which the Trade Union Assistant Secretary left

the weavers for the employers, in the midst of a crisis, with the Union

affairs in confusion, was stigmatised as desertion.

[604] The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation

went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive

introduction of women and the successive transformations of the

industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed

extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892

we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In

1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades

has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters,

warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers,

established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England

as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering

more than 100,000 (_The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union_,

by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal

representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool

Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed”

among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.

In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the

Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred

Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the

older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851;

12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the

monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of

Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members,

occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton

goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the

Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen

workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35

societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers

and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).

[605] The history of the struggles in the engineering industry may

be gathered from the monthly _Journal_ of the A.S.E. and the Annual

Reports of this and other engineering Trade Unions; from the references

in _Engineering_ and other employers’ periodicals. For the lock-out

of 1897, see also the _Times_ and _Labour Gazette_ for that year, and

also an anonymous volume, _The Engineering Strike_, 1897. See also for

some of the points at issue, _Industrial Democracy_, by S. and B. Webb,

1897; _An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917, and

_The Works Manager To-day_, by Sidney Webb, 1918.

[606] The Unions which, along with the A.S.E., ratified the agreement

were the Steam Engine Makers’ Society, the United Machine Workers’

Association, the United Kingdom Society of Amalgamated Smiths and

Strikers, the Associated Brassfounders and Coppersmiths’ Society, the

North of England Brass Turners’ Society, and the London United Metal

Turners, Fitters and Finishers, having an aggregate membership of

70,000.

The societies which failed to secure ratification on the members’

vote, in some cases merely by the failure to obtain a sufficiently

large poll, were the Amalgamated Toolmakers’ Society, the Electrical

Trades Union, the United Brass Founders and Finishers’ Association,

the Amalgamated Instrument Makers’ Society, the United Pattern

Makers’ Association, the Associated Smiths and Strikers, the National

Brassworkers and Metal Mechanics, the Association of Engineering and

Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, and the Scale and Beam Makers’ Society, with

something like 100,000 members in the aggregate. Probably some of these

will take another vote in the near future.

The old-established Friendly Society of Ironfounders (35,000 members)

continues quite apart, though joining freely in engineering trade

movements. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is

likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for

closer union.

[607] _Trade Unionism: a New Model_, by R. Page Arnot, 1919; and

_Is Trade Unionism played out?_ 1919, by the same. Some “extremist”

thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the

“Industrial Democracy” that they desire upon a development of the

Shop Stewards’ Movement, which should become, together with a “Works

Committee,” the instrument of transferring the management of each

undertaking from its present capitalist owners and directors to the

elected representatives of the persons employed. See _The Workers’

Committee, an Outline of its Principles and Structures_, by J. T.

Murphy (1918), and _Compromise or Independence, an Examination of the

Whitley Report_ (1918), by the same, both published by the Sheffield

Workers’ Committee.

[608] The Amalgamated Society of Steel and Ironworkers and the

Tin and Sheet Millmen’s Association failed to secure their

members’ ratification by vote, whilst the National Association of

Blastfurnacemen withheld its adhesion. These may be expected to adhere

in due course.

[609] The London dock labourers found themselves in 1911, with an

increased cost of living and the virtual abandonment of attempts to

improve their method of employment, little better off than in 1889.

See _Casual Labour at the Docks_, by H. A. Mess, 1916; and, for the

position at other ports, _Le Travail casuel dans les ports anglais_, by

J. Malégue, 1913; _The Liverpool Docks Problem_, 1912, and _The First

Year’s Working of the Liverpool Dock Scheme_, 1914, both by R. Williams

(of the Labour Exchange); and “Towards the Solution of the Casual

Labour Problem,” by F. Keeling, in _Economic Journal_, March 1913.

[610] _History of the London Transport Workers’ Strike_, by Ben

Tillett, 1911; _The Great Strike Movement of 1911 and its Lessons_, by

H. W. Lee, 1911; _The Times_ for June-August 1911; _Labour Gazette_,

1911-12.

[611] _The Working Life of Shop Assistants_, by Joseph Hallsworth and

R. J. Davis, 1913.

[612] A separate Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, long

small in membership, has also risen to 4500 members.

[613] See _English Teachers and their Professional Organisations_, by

Mrs. Sidney Webb, published as supplements to _The New Statesman_ of

September 25 and October 2, 1915.

[614] From 1913 onward a persistent attempt to establish a Trade

Union was made by many of the Police and Prison Officers, which was

resisted by the Home Secretary, as responsible for the Metropolitan

Police, and by all the Local Authorities. In 1913 the Police and Prison

Officers’ Union was formed by ex-Inspector Symes, and in 1917 it was

reorganised, without securing either recognition or sanction. Cases of

“victimisation” having occurred, there was a sudden strike on August

29, 1918, which was participated in by nearly the whole of the police

in many London divisions. This took the world (and also the criminal

population) by surprise; but through good-humoured handling by the

Prime Minister (who received the Executive Committee of the Union and

told them that “the Union could not be recognised during the war”), the

Government persuaded the men promptly to resume their duties, with a

cessation of “victimisation” for joining the Union and a substantial

increase of pay. When hostilities ceased, the Union expected some

measure of official sanction, but none was accorded, and grievances

remained unredressed. On July 31, 1919, a second strike was suddenly

called, which resulted in failure, only a couple of thousand men

coming out in London, and a few hundred in Liverpool, Birkenhead, and

elsewhere, together with a small number of prison warders. At Liverpool

and Birkenhead there was serious looting of shops and public-houses

by turbulent crowds. The authorities stood firm, the Home Secretary

refusing all sanction for the establishment of a Trade Union in the

police force and prison staff, and summarily dismissing all the

strikers, at the same time announcing large concessions in the way of

wages, promotion, and pensions, and conceding, not a Trade Union, but

the establishment of an elective organisation of the police force, by

grades, entitled to make formal representations and complaints. This

concession was embodied in the Police Act, 1919, which explicitly

prohibited to the police either membership of, or affiliation to, any

Trade Union or political organisation. The dismissed policemen were

not reinstated, but the Government informally assisted some of them to

obtain other employment.

[615] For the history of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and

the contemporary District Unions, we have drawn on the voluminous

printed minutes of proceedings and reports which are seldom seen

outside the Miners’ Offices; the various publications of the Labour

Department of the Board of Trade (now the Ministry of Labour) and

the Home Office; _The British Coal Trade_, by H. Stanley Jevons

(1915); _The British Coal Industry_, by Gilbert Stone (1919); _Labour

Strife in the South Wales Coalfield, 1910-11_, by D. Evans (1911);

_The Adjustment of Wages_, by Sir W. J. Ashley; _Miners’ Wages and

the Sliding Scale_, by W. Smart (1894); _Miners and the Eight Hours

Movement_, by M. Percy; _History of the Durham Miners’ Association_,

by J. Wilson (1907); _A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron

Watson (1908); _Memoirs of a Miners’ Leader_, by J. Wilson (1910);

_Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry_, by George Harvey (1917);

_A Plan for the Democratic Control of the Mining Industry_, by the

Industrial Committee of the South Wales Socialist Society (1919); the

Reports and evidence of the Coal Industry Commission, 1919, and the

voluminous newspaper discussion to which it gave rise, together with

_Facts from the Coal Commission_ and _Further Facts from the Coal

Commission_, both by R. Page Arnot (1919).

[616] The enginemen, boilermen and firemen, colliery mechanics,

cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen and other officials,

colliery clerks and various kinds of surface-workers about the mines

have all their own Unions, which have greatly developed of recent

years, and are in many districts not very willing to join the county

miners’ associations, though they often act in conjunction with these.

Their own federations are referred to on p. 550.

[617] _The British Coal Trade_ (by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915), p. 599.

[618] The other railwaymen’s Unions are the Belfast and Dublin

Locomotive Engine-drivers’ and Firemen’s Trade Union, founded in 1872,

and still existing (1920) with a few hundred members; the Associated

Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, founded in 1880, a

powerful sectional society with 33,000 members, which long maintained a

jealous rivalry with the Amalgamated; the Railway Clerks’ Association,

founded in 1897, remaining very small for a whole decade, absorbing

in 1911 the Railway Telegraph Clerks’ Association, founded 1897, with

85,000 members; the Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, founded in

1910, tiny and insignificant; the National Union of Railway Clerks,

formed in 1913, a tiny local body, arising out of the suspension of the

Sheffield Branch of the Railway Clerks’ Association, temporary only.

We may mention the Scottish Society of Railway Servants, founded in

the eighteen-eighties, merged in the Amalgamated Society in 1892; the

United Signalmen and Pointsmen, founded in 1880, merged in the N.U.R.

in 1913; the General Railway Workers’ Union, founded in 1889, merged in

the N.U.R., 1913.

For the development of Trade Unionism in the railway world, and the

various controversies, we have drawn mainly on the numerous reports and

other publications of the Unions themselves; the _Railway Review_ and

the _Railway Clerk_ (the pleading for the Companies being found in the

_Railway News_, subsequently incorporated in the _Railway Gazette_);

_Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems_, by G. D.

H. Cole and R. Page Arnot (1917); the _Souvenir History_, published by

the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (1910); _Men and Rails_,

by Rowland Kenney (1913); _Der Arbeitskampf der englischen Eisenbahner

im Jahre 1911_, by C. Leubuscher, 1913; the various publications on

the legal proceedings, for which see the next chapter; the Reports of

the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents, hours of labour, etc., of the

Select Committee of 1892, and the Special Committee of Inquiry of 1911;

_An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole (1918); _From

Engine-cleaner to Privy Councillor_ [J. H. Thomas], by J. F. Moir Bussy

(1917).

[619] _Slavery on Scottish Railways_ (1888); _The Scottish Railway

Strike_, by James Mavor (1891).

[620] The North Eastern Railway Company was so far an exception that,

already in 1890, it was willing to receive representations from the

Trade Union.

[621] A notable feature was a statistical census of the wages of the

railwaymen, compiled by the Amalgamated Society through its membership,

for the presentation of which Mr. Richard Bell, the Secretary, obtained

the services of a Cambridge graduate, Mr. W. T. Layton. This “Green

Book” revealed that 38 per cent received 20s. per week or under, and

49.8 per cent between 21s. and 30s.; with atrocious hours. Attempts

to discredit these statistics were made by the Companies, it being in

particular constantly suggested that nearly all the 100,000 paid under

£1 per week were boys. It took the Board of Trade four years to compile

and publish an official wage-census for October 1907, which eventually

revealed that 96,000 adult railwaymen were receiving 19s. per week or

less (Board of Trade Report, February 1912), an extraordinarily exact

confirmation of the much-abused census taken by the Union. See _Men and

Rails_, by Rowland Kenney, 1913.

[622] This intimation undoubtedly meant that the Government had

decided, as the _Times_ expressly said, to use the Royal Engineers to

run trains--a decision to be compared with that at once announced in

the national railway strike of 1919, that no use would be made of the

troops actually to run trains, nor would the Post Office officials

be asked to do railwaymen’s work, nor persons on State Unemployment

Benefit be called upon to accept employment on the railways. The change

in attitude of the Government in eight years is significant.

[623] The committee consisted, for the first time, of equal numbers

of persons appointed as being representative of employers and workmen

respectively--two on each side--none of them directly concerned with

the industry, with an “impartial chairman,” all five being selected by

the Government. For the Companies, Sir T. Ratcliffe Ellis and Mr. C.

G. Beale; for the workmen, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Mr. John

Burnett; the Chairman was Sir David Harrel, K.C.B., an official of the

Irish Government.

[624] The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen,

having now 51,000 members, unfortunately stood aloof; and the annals

of railway Trade Unionism were, down to 1918, largely made up of the

wrangling between this society and the National Union of Railwaymen.

[625] The mechanics and labourers in the railway companies’ engineering

and repairing shops, though many of them have always been members

of the various engineering and other craft Unions, long remained

relatively unorganised. Many of the less skilled were enrolled by the

General Railway Workers’ Union in 1889-1913; and when this was merged

in the National Union of Railwaymen, with its broadened constitution,

many more of the mechanics and labourers in the railway workshops

were recruited, and the N.U.R. sought to obtain for them the advances

and other benefits for which it was pressing. The railway companies

disputed the right of the N.U.R. to speak for the “shopmen,” and the

claim provoked the resentment of the craft Unions, which were now

paying increased attention to the organisation of men of their crafts

in the railway workshops. Repeated attempts have been made to arrive

at some “line of demarcation” or other compromise, by which this

rivalry between Unions could be brought to an end; but hitherto without

success. The quarrel is inflamed by a conflict of Trade Union doctrine.

The engineers, boilermakers, carpenters, and other trades assert that

organisation should be by craft, whatever may be the industry in which

the craftsman is working. The advocates of the “New Model” of the

N.U.R. assert the superiority of organisation by industry, including in

each industry all the crafts actually concerned. See _Trade Unionism on

the Railways, its History and Problems_, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page

Arnot, 1917.

[626] The Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Railway

Clerks’ Association in 1913 had suggested that the representatives of

the railway workers should constitute one-third of a National Railway

Board--a proposal that did not content the larger Union.

[627] It was reported that in some cases the soldiers fraternised with

the pickets and were promptly withdrawn to barracks; and the Cabinet

was certainly warned, by high military authority, against attempting to

use the troops.

[628] For an account of this Department see pp. 571-2.

[629] A notable feature was a revolt of the compositors and printers’

assistants, who threatened to strike and stop the newspapers altogether

unless the railwaymen were allowed to present their case and unless

abusive posters were abandoned.

[630] _Railway Dispute, 1919: Report to the Labour Movement of Great

Britain by the Committee appointed at the Caxton Hall Conference_

(National Transport Workers’ Federation).

[631] British Trade Unionism has often been contrasted, to its

disadvantage, with the more scientifically classified German Trade

Unionism before the Great War. It was, for instance, often pointed

out that the three millions of German Trade Unionists were grouped in

no more than 48 Unions. This, however, ignored the numerous competing

Hirsch-Duncker and Christian Unions, which were far more destructive

of unity than are the crowd of minor societies in Great Britain and

Ireland. At present (1920) the 48 largest Trade Unions of this country

concentrate a larger membership than the much-praised 48 Trade Unions

of Germany did in 1914.

[632] See _An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917.

[633] See the _History of the British Trades Union Congress_ (by W. J.

Davis), vol. ii. (1916), p. 156; and the successive _Annual Reports_ of

the General Federation of Trade Unions from 1900 onward.

[634] Such as those for Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire, North Wales, the

South-Western Counties, and Yorkshire.

[635] At Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton, Hanley, Manchester,

Worcester, and some other towns, the Trades Council has at times

been allowed the use of a room in the Town Hall, or other municipal

building. The Local Government Board in 1908 suggested to Local

Authorities that this assistance should be generally afforded to them.

[636] One of the most active supporters of the Trades Council

Movement is the National Union of Railwaymen, which has been largely

responsible for the valuable help rendered by the Trades Councils in

the organisation of agricultural labourers. The Amalgamated Union of

Co-operative Employees, that of Operative Bakers of Great Britain and

Ireland, and the Municipal Employees’ Association are also outstanding

supporters of the Trades Councils, whilst the Oldham Operative

Cotton-spinners, and the Operative Lace Makers of Nottingham make

branch affiliation compulsory. In many of the principal Unions branch

affiliation fees are contributed wholly, or in large proportion, from

Central Funds.

[637] The Manchester Trades Council, and especially its Chairman, Mr.

Purcell, of the Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association, successfully

brought to a compromise the very serious strike of the Amalgamated

Union of Co-operative Employees against the Lancashire and Yorkshire

Co-operative Societies in 1919.

[638] The Gateshead Trades Council and Local Labour Party holds

an “Information Bureau meeting” once a week, devoted to answering

inquiries and affording information on Local Government affairs.

[639] The Trades Union Congress has, since 1873, published a long and

detailed _Annual Report_; and the Parliamentary Committee has, for some

years past, issued a _Quarterly Circular_ to its constituent bodies.

Besides these, there should be consulted the _History of the British

Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, of which two volumes have been

issued (1910 and 1916); _Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life_, by

himself, 1901.

[640] See the significant comments in _History of the British Trades

Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 102-8.

[641] In the early period of its history the middle-class friends of

Trade Unionism read papers and took part in debates. But for many

years no one has been allowed to participate in its proceedings in

any capacity except duly elected delegates who have worked at the

trade they represent, or are actually salaried officials of affiliated

Trade Unions. In 1892 and 1893 admission was further limited to those

societies which contributed a specified amount per thousand members

to the funds of the Congress. The Parliamentary Committee consists of

seventeen members, elected by ballot of the whole of the delegates

on the fifth day of the Congress. The successful candidates are

usually the salaried officers of the great societies, the Standing

Orders expressly providing that no trade shall have more than one

representative except the miners, who may now have two. The Secretary

receives, even in 1920, only £500 a year, and the post has nearly

always been filled by an officer enjoying emoluments for other duties.

For the last forty years the holder has almost constantly been a

member of Parliament, with prior obligations to his constituents,

which are not always consistent with the directions of his fellow

Trade Unionists; and with onerous Parliamentary duties, which often

hamper his secretarial work. For many years he had to provide whatever

clerical assistance he required; but in 1896 a clerk, and in 1917 an

Assistant Secretary, were added to the staff.

[642] Each Union casts votes in proportion to its affiliated

membership, but can divide them as it pleases among the candidates.

Between 1906 and 1915 the delegates were divided into ten groups of

allied industries, and each group chose its own member. At the 1919

Congress a resolution was carried directing that the election should

henceforth be by the transferable vote; and it remains to be seen

whether this will upset the “dickering for votes.”

[643] The situation was for years further complicated by the fact

that C. Fenwick, M.P., who in 1890 succeeded Henry Broadhurst in the

office, was one of the Parliamentary representatives of the Durham

miners, a majority of whom were not in accordance with the decision of

the Congress on the crucial question of an Eight Hours’ Bill. It was

in vain that Fenwick, with most engaging candour, explained to each

successive Congress that his pledge to his constituents, no less than

his own opinions, would compel him actively to oppose all regulation

of the hours of adult male labour. The Congress nevertheless elected

him for four successive years as Secretary to the Parliamentary

Committee, replacing him only in 1894 by an officer who was prepared

to support the policy of the Congress. This is only another example

of the extraordinary constancy (referred to at p. 471) with which a

working-class organisation adheres to a man who has once been elected

an officer--a constancy due, as we think, partly to a generous

objection to “do a man out of his job,” and partly to a deep-rooted

belief that any given piece of work can be done as well by one man as

another. Much the same situation has recurred frequently in the record

of the Parliamentary Committee.

[644] One such case may be mentioned. In 1898 a small Trade Union

of old standing (Co-operative Smiths’ Society, Gateshead) formally

complained that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had allowed its

members to take the places of men who had struck. The Parliamentary

Committee, acting under Standing Order No. 20, appointed three of its

members as arbitrators, who, after elaborate inquiry, found the charge

proved, and requested the A.S.E. to withdraw its members from the place

in dispute. The A.S.E. refused to accept the award, and withdrew from

the Congress (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899; _History

of British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp.

161-62, 165-67).

Another case, in 1902, was adjudicated on in a similar way, where

the United Kingdom Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers complained of the

Associated Blacksmiths’ Society, which was found to blame (_ibid._ p.

208).

[645] In view of the failure of the Trades Union Congress to equip its

Parliamentary Committee with any staff that would enable it to deal

with these problems, the Fabian Society started in 1912 the Fabian

Research Department, to investigate and supply information upon these

and other questions. This organisation has now become the Labour

Research Department, an independent federal combination of Trade

Unions, Co-operative and Socialist societies, and other Labour bodies

(including the Labour Party, the English, Scottish, and Irish Trades

Union Congresses, the Co-operative Union, the _Daily Herald_, most of

the big Trade Unions, and some hundreds of Trade Councils, Local Labour

Parties, etc.), with individual students and investigators. It has its

offices at 34 Eccleston Square, London, S.W.1, next door to those of

the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party; issues to its members a

monthly bulletin of information, and has published many useful books,

pamphlets, and monographs. It answers a stream of questions from Trade

Unions all over the country on every conceivable point of theory or

practice; it supplies particulars of rates of pay, hours of labour,

and conditions of employment in other trades; and it is frequently

employed in helping to prepare cases for submission to Joint Boards or

Arbitration Tribunals. Its influential conduct of the “publicity” of

the National Union of Railwaymen in the 1919 strike has already been

described.

[646] For instance, Henry Taylor, the coadjutor of Joseph Arch in

organising the agricultural labourers in 1872, was a carpenter;

Tom Mann, for two years salaried President of the Dock, Wharf, and

Riverside Labourers, has always been a member, and is now General

Secretary, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers; whilst Edward

M’Hugh, for some time General Secretary of the National Union of Dock

Labourers, is a compositor; Mr. Charles Duncan, President of the

Workers’ Union, is an engineer; Mr. R. Walker, General Secretary of

the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, was successively a shopkeeper and a

railway clerk, and so on.

[647] The fervent energy of the typical official of the Labour Union

of that day was well described in 1894 in the following sketch by Mrs.

Bruce Glasier (Katherine Conway), a member of the “Independent Labour

Party.” “He has his offices, but is generally conspicuous there from

his absence. Walter Crane’s ‘Triumph of Labour’ hangs on the wall, and

copies of _The Fabian Essays_, and the greater proportion of the tracts

issued by the Manchester or Glasgow Labour Presses, lie scattered over

the room. In England, Byron and Shelley, in Scotland, Byron and Burns,

are the approved poets. Carlyle and a borrowed Ruskin or two are also

in evidence, and a library edition of Thorold Rogers’ _Work and Wages_.

John Stuart Mill’s _Political Economy_, side by side with a _Student’s

Marx_, give proof of a laudable determination to go to the roots of the

matter, and to base all arguments on close and careful study. But the

call to action is never-ceasing, and train-travelling, if conducive to

the enormous success of new journalism, affords but little opportunity

for serious reading. ‘The daily newspapers are continually filled with

lies, which one ought to know how to refute,’ and the situation all

over the globe ‘may develop at any moment.’

“Yet, unlike the old Unionist leader, he is ever ready for the

interviewer or the sympathetic inquirer, of whatever class or sex.

Right racily he will describe the rapid growth of the movement since

the great dock strike of 1889, and show the necessity in dealing with

such mixed masses of men as fill the ranks of unskilled labour to-day,

of continually striking while the iron is hot, and of substituting

a policy of _coup d’état_ for the deliberate preparation of the

older Unions. ‘Lose here, win there,’ is our only motto, he says,

resolutely determined to look at defeat from the point of view of a

general-in-chief, and not from the narrower range of an officer in

charge of a special division. At the moment of surrender he may have

been white to the lips, but the next day will find him cheery and

undaunted in another part of the country, carrying on his campaign and

enrolling hundreds of recruits by the sheer energy of his confident

eloquence.” (_Weekly Sun_, January 28, 1894.)

[648] It is, we think, only the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation

that had laid down and acted on the principle of entrusting the

appointment of salaried officials to the Executive Committee, on the

express ground that popular election by ballot is not the right way to

select administrative officers.

[649] It would clearly be an advantage if the distinction between those

responsible for policy (whether designated Executive Councillors,

President or otherwise) and those whose function should be executive

only, were fully borne in mind. Whilst the former should certainly be

elected by, and held responsible to, the membership, it is submitted

that experience shows the advantage of purely executive officers--which

may be what the secretaries and district delegates should become--being

appointed by, and held responsible to, those who are elected.

At least, a separation should be made between persons elected to be

responsible for policy, and officers employed for tasks requiring

specialised training (such as the whole of the insurance work of

the Union and of its Approved Society; its constantly increasing

statistical requirements, and its legal business). Such officers should

certainly be appointed, not elected; and should take no part in the

decision of issues of policy, even as regards their own department.

Speaking generally, much more specialisation of functions and officers

should be aimed at in all Unions of magnitude.

[650] Such a building was decided on in 1918-19 by joint and separate

conferences of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, as a

“Memorial of Freedom and Peace,” in memory of those who lost their

lives in the Great War. It is, however, by no means certain that the

necessary large cost will be subscribed.