It would thus be easy to argue that the representatives of the Trade

Union world made a series of bad bargains with the Government, and

through the Government with the capitalist employers, at a time when

the nation’s needs would have enabled the organised manual workers

almost to dictate their own terms. But this is to take a short-sighted

view. It is a sufficient answer to say that the great mass of the Trade

Unionists, like the leaders themselves, wanted above all things that

the nation should win the war; found it repugnant to make stipulations

in the national emergency, and did not realise the extent to which

they were being tricked and cheated by the officials. But apart from

this impulsive and unself-regarding patriotism we think that, when

it becomes possible to cast up and balance all the results of the

innovations of the war period, the Trade Union Movement will be found

to have gained and not lost. We may suggest, perhaps paradoxically,

that the very ease with which the War Cabinet suppressed the civil

liberties of the manual-working wage-earners during the war, and even

continued after the Armistice a machinery of industrial _espionage_,

with _agents provocateurs_ of workshop “sedition,” enormously increased

the solidarity of the Trade Union Movement--an effect intensified

during 1919 by the costly and futile intervention of the British

Government in Russia on behalf of military leaders whom the Trade

Unionists, rightly or wrongly, believed to be organising the forces of

political and economic reaction. Sober and responsible Trade Unionists,

who had taken for granted the easy-going freedom and tolerance

characteristic of English life in times of peace, suddenly realised

that these conditions could at any moment be withdrawn from them by

what seemed the arbitrary fiat of a Government over which they found

that they had no control. In this way the abrogation of Trade Union

liberty during the war gave the same sort of intellectual fillip to

Trade Unionism and the Labour Party in 1915-19 that had been given in

1901-13 by the Taff Vale Case and the Osborne Judgement. At the same

time the Government found itself compelled, in order to secure the

co-operation of the Trade Unions, both during the war and amid the

menacing economic conditions of the first half of 1919, to accord to

them, and to their leaders, a _locus standi_ in the determination of

essentially national issues that was undreamt of in previous times.

The Trade Unions, in fact, through shouldering their responsibility in

the national cause, gained enormously in social and political status.

In practically every branch of public administration, from unimportant

local committees up to the Cabinet itself, we find the Trade Union

world now accepted as forming, virtually, a separate constituency,

which has to be specially represented. We shall tell the tale in our

next chapter of the participation of members of the Parliamentary

Labour Party in the Coalition Governments of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd

George. What is here relevant is that these Trade Union officials

were selected in the main, not on personal grounds, but because they

represented the Trade Union Movement. They accepted ministerial office

with the approval, and they relinquished ministerial office at the

request of the National Conference of the Labour Party, in which the

Trade Unions exercised the predominant influence. A similar recognition

of the Trade Union Movement has marked all the recently constituted

Local Government structure, from the committees set up in 1914 for

the relief of distress to those organised in 1917 for the rationing

and control of the food supply, and the tribunals formed in 1919 for

the suppression of “profiteering.” In all these cases the Government

specifically required the appointment of representatives of the local

Trade Unions. Trade Unionists have to constitute half the members

appointed to the Advisory Committees attached to the Employment

Exchanges; and Trade Unionist workmen sit, not only on the temporary

“Munitions Courts” administering the disciplinary provisions of the

Munitions of War Acts, but also on the local Tribunals of Appeal to

determine whether a workman is entitled to the State Unemployment

Benefit. In the administration of the Military and Naval Pensions Act

of 1916 a further step in recognition of Trade Unionism was taken. Not

only were the nominees of Labour placed upon the Statutory (Central)

Pensions Committee, but, in the order constituting the Local Pensions

Committees, the Trade Union organisations in each locality, which

were named in the schemes, were expressly and specifically accorded

the right to elect whom they chose as their representatives on these

committees by which the pensions were to be awarded.[683] When,

towards the close of the war, the Committee presided over by the Rt.

Hon. J. H. Whitley, M.P., propounded its scheme of Joint Industrial

Councils of equal numbers of representative employers and workers

for the supervision and eventual administration of many matters of

interest in each industry throughout the kingdom--the “mouse” which

was practically the whole outcome as regards industrial reorganisation

of the Ministry of Reconstruction--it was specifically to the Trade

Unions in each industry, and to them alone, that the election of the

wage-earners’ representatives was entrusted.[684] When, in 1919, it

seemed desirable to make a series of comprehensive reforms in the terms

of employment, it was not to Parliament that the Prime Minister turned,

but to a “National Industrial Conference,” to which he summoned some

five hundred representatives of the Employers’ Associations and Trade

Unions. It was by this body, through its own sub-committee of thirty

employers’ representatives and thirty Trade Union representatives,

that were elaborated the measures instituting a Legal Maximum Eight

Hours Day and a statutory Minimum Wage Commission that the Ministry

undertook to present to Parliament. In the Royal Commission on

Agriculture of 1919, the several Unions enrolling farm labourers were

invited to nominate as many members (eight) as were accorded to the

farmers, whilst of the four remaining members appointed as scientific

or statistical experts--all landlords being excluded--two were chosen

among those known to be sympathetic to Labour. In the statutory Coal

Industry Commission of the same year, to which reference has already

been made, the Miners’ Federation made its participation absolutely

conditional on being allowed to nominate half of the total membership,

under a presumedly impartial Judge of the High Court, including not

merely three Trade Union officials to balance the three mine-owners,

but also three out of the six “disinterested” members by whom--all

royalty owners being excluded--the Commission was to be completed.

All this constitutional development is at once the recognition and the

result of the new position in the State that Trade Unionism has won--a

position due not merely to the numerical growth that we have described,

but also to the uprise of new ideas and wider aspirations in the Trade

Union world itself.

THE REVOLUTION IN THOUGHT

The new ideas which are to-day taking root in the Trade Union world

centre round the aspiration of the organisations of manual workers

to take part--some would urge the predominant part, a few might say

the sole part--in the control and direction of the industries in

which they gain their livelihood. Such a claim was made, as we have

described in the third chapter of this work, in its most extreme form,

by the revolutionary Trade Unionism of 1830-34; and it lingered on

in the minds of the Chartists as long as any of them survived. But

after the collapse, in 1848, of Chartism as an organised movement

British Trade Unionism settled down to the attainment of a strictly

limited end--the maintenance and progressive improvement, within each

separate occupation or craft, of the terms of the bargain made by the

wage-earner with the employers, including alike all the conditions of

service and complete freedom from personal oppression. Hence the Trade

Unionist as such, during the second half of the nineteenth century,

tacitly accepted the existing organisation of industry. He discussed

the rival advantages of private enterprise carried on in the interests

of the capitalist profit-maker on the one hand, and of the Consumers’

Co-operative Movement or State and Municipal enterprise on the other,

almost exclusively from the standpoint of whether the profit-making

employers or the representatives of the consumers or the citizens

offered better conditions of employment to the members of his own

organisation. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century this

remained the dominant working-class view. We find in the proceedings

of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1891-94, a striking demonstration of

the strictly limited purpose of British Trade Unionism at that date.

Whether we study the elaborate collection of Trade Union rules and

other documents made by the Commission, or the personal evidence given

by the leaders or advocates of Trade Unionism, we find from beginning

to end absolutely no claim, and even no suggestion, that the Trade

Union should participate in the direction of industry, otherwise than

in arranging with the employers the conditions of the wage-earner’s

working life.[685] One or two Unions included, among their published

“objects,” vague and pious references to the desirability of

co-operative production; but the assumption was always that any such

co-operative production would be carried out by the members of the

Union working in and managing a particular establishment, which would

take its place, like any private establishment, within the framework of

the capitalist system. When a Trade Union leader was also a Socialist

he assumed that the “Socialisation” of industry would be carried out

by the Central or Local Government, or by the Consumers’ Co-operative

Movement. Hence, Mr. Tom Mann, himself a Royal Commissioner, who was

called as a witness before the Commission, was a powerful advocate of

nationalisation and municipalisation. “I am distinctly favourable,

and am associated with those who are earnestly advocating,” he stated

from the witness-chair, “the advisability of encouraging the State to

at once entertain the proposal of the State control of railways. I am

also identified with those who are favourable to the nationalisation

of the land, which means, of course, a State control of land in the

common interest; and I am continually advocating the desirability

for statesmen and politicians and municipal councillors to try and

understand in what particular departments of industry they can get to

work and exercise their faculties in controlling trade and industry in

the common interest where that interest would be likely to be secured

better than under the present method.” When asked by the Duke of

Devonshire whether his advocacy of the nationalisation of the railways

was in the interests of the public or mainly in the interests of the

workmen employed on the railways, he replied: “Not mainly on behalf

of the workers; I would put it equally so. I believe it would serve

the public interest, the general well-being of the community.... I do

not believe that a Government Department will ever be healthy until

the public themselves are healthy in this direction, and are keeping a

watchful eye upon the whole governmental show and secure the general

well-being by their watchfulness. I do not think that State control of

industry will ever be brought about until that development on the part

of the public themselves is brought about, and they desire to see it

controlled in the common interest.... When a sufficient number of men

are prepared to take the initiative, and educate public opinion to the

desirability of a superior method of control in the common interest,

then I believe it will be done, not all at once, but gradually.”[686]

But Mr. Tom Mann did not stand alone. The Independent Labour Party,

the largest and the most popular of Socialist societies in the United

Kingdom, established in 1893, and largely recruited from the ranks of

Trade Unionists, carried on, right down to the outbreak of the Great

War, a vigorous propaganda in favour of an indefinite extension of

State and Municipal administration of industrial undertakings, whilst

the more doctrinaire Social Democratic Federation was, in its early

days, outspokenly contemptuous of the whole Trade Union Movement as a

mere “palliative” of the Capitalist system. This bias in favour of the

communal organisation, in favour of the government of the people by and

for the people organised in geographical areas, was, until the opening

of the twentieth century, equally dominant among the most “advanced”

Labour and Socialist thinkers on the Continent of Europe.[687]

But in spite of the assumption that services and industries ought to

be carried out by democracies of consumers and citizens, organised in

geographical districts--that is, by the Central and Local Government

of a Political Democracy--there always remained, in the hearts of the

manual working class in Great Britain, an instinctive faith in the

opposite idea of Associations of Producers owning, as such, both the

instruments and the product of their labour. Throughout the whole

of the second half of the nineteenth century it was pathetic to see

this faith struggling on, in spite of the almost constant failure of

the innumerable little manufacturing establishments carried on by

Associations of Producers. What finally killed it as an ideal, in

the eyes of the Trade Unionists of Great Britain, was the fact that

Co-operative Production and its child, Co-partnership, were taken up by

the most reactionary persons and parties in the State. Great peers and

Conservative statesmen were always blessing “Co-operative Production,”

and always trying to stimulate the workers to undertake business on

their own account. When the invariable failure of self-governing

workshops became too obvious, the advocates of Co-operative Production

fell back on “Labour Co-partnership”--partnership in business with the

capitalist class! This was so obviously, and almost avowedly, an attack

on, or at least a proposal for the supersession of Trade Unionism, that

it aroused the fiercest opposition; and the very idea became anathema

in the Trade Union world. In short, there was, from the collapse of

Owenism and Chartism in the eighteen-thirties and -forties, right

down to 1900, practically no sign that the British Trade Unions ever

thought of themselves otherwise than as organisations to secure an

ever-improving Standard of Life by means of an ever-increasing control

of the conditions under which they worked. They neither desired nor

sought any participation in the management of the technical processes

of industry (except in so far as these might affect the conditions

of their employment, or the selection of persons to be employed);

whilst it never occurred to a Trade Union to claim any power over, or

responsibility for, buying the raw materials or marketing the product.

On the contrary, the most advanced Trade Union leaders were never tired

of asserting that their members must enjoy the full standard conditions

of employment, whatever arrangements the employers might make with

regard to the other factors of production; or however unskilful

employers or groups of employers might prove to be in the buying of the

raw material, or in the selling of the commodities in the markets of

the world.

With the opening years of the twentieth century we become aware of a

new intellectual ferment, not confined to any one country, nor even

to the manual working class. We watch, emerging in various forms, new

variants of the old idea of the organisation of industries and services

by those who are actually carrying them on. We see it working among

the brain-working professionals. Alike in England and in France the

teachers in the schools and the professors in the colleges began to

assert both their moral right to manage the institutions as they alone

know how, and the advantage that this would be to the community. The

doctors were demanding a similar control over the exercise of their own

function. But the most conspicuous, and the most widely influential,

of the forms taken by the idea was the revolutionary movement that

spread among large sections of the wage-earners almost simultaneously

in France, the classic home of associations of producers, and in the

United States, with its large population of foreign immigrants. In both

these countries any widespread Trade Unionism was of much more recent

growth than in Great Britain, and was still regarded, alike by the

employers and by the Government, as an undesirable and revolutionary

force. The “_syndicats_” of France, and the Labour Unions among the

foreign workers in the United States were, in fact, at the opening

of the twentieth century, in much the same stage of development as

the British Trade Unions were when they were swept into the vortex of

revolutionary Owenism in 1834. Alike in their constitutions and in

their declared objects, in the first decade of the new century, the

General Confederation of Labour in France and the Industrial Workers of

the World in the United States bear a striking resemblance to the Grand

National Consolidated Trades Union that we have described in an earlier

chapter; and, like that organisation, both of them excited a quite

exaggerated terror in the hearts of magistrates and Ministers of State.

Indeed, the doctrines and phraseology of the mass of literature turned

out by French Trade Unionists between 1900 and 1910 are remarkably

like--allowing for the superior literary power of the French--the

pamphlets and leaflets of the Owenite Trade Unionism.[688] There is the

same conception of a republic of industry, consisting of a federation

of Trade Unions, local and central; the federation of shop clubs,

branches, or local unions forming the Local Authority for all purposes,

whilst a standing conference of the national representatives of all the

Trade Unions constitutes a co-ordinating or superintending National

Authority. There is the same reliance, as a means of achievement, on

continuous strikes, culminating in a “general expropriatory strike.”

There is the same denunciation of the political State as a useless

encumbrance, and the same appeal to the soldiers to join the workers in

upsetting the existing system.

We need not stay to inquire how this new ferment crossed the Atlantic

or the Channel. Between 1905 and 1910 we become aware of the birth,

in some of the industrial districts, of a number of new propagandist

groups--more especially among the miners and engineers--groups of

persons in revolt not only against the Capitalist System but against

the limited aims of contemporary Trade Unionism and the usual

categories of contemporary Socialism. The pioneer of the new faith

in the United Kingdom seems to have been James Connolly, afterwards

organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, to

which we have already referred, a man of noble character and fine

intelligence, whose tragic execution in 1916, after the suppression of

the Dublin rising, made him one of the martyred heroes of the Irish

race. Connolly, who was a disciple of the founder of the American

Socialist Labour Party, Daniel De Leon, started a similar organisation

on the Clyde in 1905. In opposition to the contemporary Socialist

propaganda in favour of the nationalisation and municipalisation of

industries and services, to be brought about by political action, he

advocated the direct supersession of the Capitalist System in each

workshop and in every industry, by the organised workers thereof.

“It is an axiom,” he said, “enforced by all the experience of the

ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically....

That natural law leads us as individuals to unite in our craft, as

crafts to unite in our industry, as industries in our class; and the

finished expression of that evolution is, we believe, the appearance

of our class upon the political battle-ground with all the economic

power behind it to enforce its mandates. Until that day dawns our

political parties of the working class are but propagandist agencies,

John the Baptists of the New Redemption; but when that day dawns our

political party will be armed with all the might of our class; will

be revolutionary in fact as well as in thought.” “Let us be clear,”

he adds, “as to the function of Industrial Unionism. That function is

to build up an industrial republic inside the shell of the political

State, in order that when that industrial republic is fully organised

it may crack the shell of the political State and step into its place

in the scheme of the universe.... Under a Socialist form of society

the administration of affairs wall be in the hands of representatives

of the various industries of the nation; ... the workers in the

shops and factories will organise themselves into unions, each union

comprising all the workers at a given industry; ... said union will

democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing

all foremen, etc., and regulating the routine of labour in that

industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the

needs of its allied trades and to the department of industry to which

it belongs.... Representatives elected from these various departments

of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or

national government of the country. In short, Social Democracy, as

its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social

life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of Democracy. Such

application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and

proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of

industrial organisation until it reaches the culminating point of

national executive power and direction. In other words, Socialism must

proceed from the bottom upwards, whereas capitalist political society

is organised from above downward; Socialism will be administered by a

committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of

the land; capitalist society is governed by representatives elected

from districts, and is based upon territorial division.”[689] A similar

ferment was to be seen at work amongst the South Wales miners, giving

rise to a series of propagandist organisations, preaching the doctrine

of Industrial Unionism as a revolutionary force, and culminating in the

much-denounced pamphlet _The Miners’ Next Step_, 1912, which created

some sensation in the capitalist world.[690]

In 1910 we find Mr. Tom Mann, fresh from organising strikes in

Australia, and inspired by a visit to Paris, preaching the new faith

to large popular audiences in London and the principal provincial

cities with the same sincerity and eloquence with which he had formerly

advocated State and Municipal Socialism and the statutory regulation

of the conditions of employment. “The Industrial Syndicalist,” he

explains, holds that “to run industry through Parliament, that is

by State machinery, will be even more mischievous to the working

class than the existing method, for it will assuredly mean that the

capitalist class will, through Government Departments, exercise over

the national forces, and over the workers, a domination that is

even more rigid than is the case to-day. And the Syndicalist also

declares that in the near future the industrially organised workers

will themselves undertake the entire responsibility of running the

industries in the interest of all who work, and are entitled to enjoy

the result of labour.”[691] “We therefore most certainly favour

strikes; we shall always do our best to help strikes to be successful,

and shall prepare the way as rapidly as possible for +The General

Strike+ of national proportions. This will be the actual Social and

Industrial Revolution. The workers will refuse to any longer manipulate

the machinery of production in the interest of the capitalist class,

and there will be no power on earth able to compel them to work

when they thus refuse.... When the capitalists get tired of running

industries, the workers will cheerfully invite them to abdicate, and

through and by their industrial organisations will run the industries

themselves in the interests of the whole community.”[692] “Finally, and

vitally essential it is,” sums up Mr. Tom Mann in 1911, “to show that

economic emancipation to the working class can only be secured by the

working class asserting its power in workshops, factories, warehouses,

mills and mines, on ships and boats and engines, and wherever work is

performed, ever extending their control over the tools of production,

until, by the power of the internationally organised Proletariat,

capitalist production shall entirely cease, and the industrial

socialist republic will be ushered in, and thus the Social Revolution

realised.”[693]

The revolutionary Industrial Unionism and Syndicalism preached by

James Connolly and Tom Mann and other fervent missionaries between

1905 and 1912 did not commend itself to the officials and leaders of

the Trade Unions any more than it did to the cautious and essentially

Conservative-minded men and women who make up the rank and file of

the British working class. But, like other revolutionary movements in

England, it prepared the way for constitutional proposals. The ideal of

taking over the instruments of production appealed to all intelligent

workmen as workmen. To them it seemed merely Co-operative Production

writ large, the ownership of the instruments and of the product of

labour by the workers themselves. But the ownership and management was

now to be carried out, not by small competing establishments doomed

to failure, but in the industry as a whole by a “blackleg-proof”

Trade Union. To the idealistic and active-minded Trade Union official

in particular, weary of the perpetual haggling with employers over

fractional changes in wages and hours, the prospect of becoming the

representative of his fellow-workers in a self-governing industry,

with all the initiative and responsibility that such a position

would involve, was decidedly attractive. So long as this ideal was

associated with violent and revolutionary methods, and left no room

for the political democracy to which Englishmen are accustomed,

or even for the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement, it failed to get

accepted either by responsible officials or by the mass of sober-minded

members. The bridge between the old conception of Trade Unionism and

the new was built by a fresh group of Socialists, who called themselves

National Guildsmen. This group of able thinkers, largely drawn

from the Universities, accepted from what we may call the Communal

Socialists the idea of the ownership of the instruments of production

by the representatives of the citizen-consumers, but proposed to vest

the management in national associations of the producers in each

industry--organisations which they declared ought to include, not

merely the present wage-earners, but all the workers, by hand or by

brain.[694] These guilds were to grow out of the existing Trade Unions,

gradually made co-extensive with each industry. We have neither the

space, nor would it be within the scope of this book, to describe or

criticise this conception of National Guilds, or the theories and

schemes of the Guild Socialists. These theories and schemes are none

the worse for being still in the making. What we are concerned with, as

historians of the Trade Union Movement, is the rapid adoption between

1913 and 1920 by many of the younger leaders of the Movement, and

subject to various modifications, also by some of the most powerful of

the Trade Unions, of this new ideal of the development of the existing

Trade Unions into self-organised, self-contained, self-governing

industrial democracies, as supplying the future method of conducting

industries and services. The schemes put forward by the National Union

of Railwaymen, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, and the Union

of Postal Workers differ widely from the revolutionary Syndicalism

of Mr. Tom Mann and the large visions of the Industrial Workers of

the World. They do not even go so far as the projects of the National

Guildsmen. In fact, they limit the claim of the manual workers merely

to participation in the management, fully conceding that the final

authority must be vested in the representatives of the community

of citizens or consumers. Thus we see the Annual General Meeting

of the National Union of Railwaymen in 1914 resolving unanimously:

“That this Congress, while reaffirming previous decisions in favour

of the nationalisation of railways, and approving the action of the

Executive Committee in arranging to obtain and give evidence before

the Royal Commission, declares 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 of the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more

economical and scientific administration.”[695] In a modified form this

resolution was brought forward by the Railway Clerks’ Association,

supported by the N.U.R., and passed by the Trades Union Congress of

1917.[696] A similar movement in favour of participation in management

has taken root among the postal workers of all kinds, in England as

also in France. At the Annual Conference, in May 1919, of the Postal

and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, which had in previous years been

passing resolutions on the subject, it was emphatically pointed out

that the control demanded by the postal employees was not restricted

to securing better conditions of employment, but that they desired

to participate in directing the technical improvement of the service

for the good of the community.[697] The Conference resolved: “That in

view of the obstructive attitude of the Department on the question of

the development of the Post Office Savings Bank, the modernising of

the Post Office Insurance System, and the expansion and improvement

of the Post Office Services generally, this Conference directs that

representatives of the Association be appointed to investigate and

report on the working of the postal cheque and transfer services from

both the national and international standpoint, and that the report

be widely circulated, and propaganda work undertaken, so that this

development of the Post Office Savings Bank--giving a greatly improved

transmission of moneys system--be introduced throughout.”[698] Finally,

we may cite the scheme for the Nationalisation of the Coal-mines that

the Miners’ Federation brought formally before the Coal Industry

Commission in 1919. Six years previously the Miners’ Federation had had

a Bill drafted and published, which provided merely for the vesting of

the collieries in a Ministry of Mines, and for the administration of

the whole industry by that department.[699] All that the Federation was

then concerned to secure for the miners themselves was the continuance

of free and lawful Trade Unionism. The Bill of 1919[700] imposed on the

Minister of Mines a whole series of National and District Councils,

and Pit Committees, each of which was to consist, to the extent of one

half, of members nominated by the Federation, the other half being

nominated by the Minister; and the expectation was not concealed that

it would be by these bipartite bodies that the administration would be

conducted. We record these schemes, which are by the nature of the case

only imperfect drafts prepared for propaganda, not so much for their

importance as precisely defined industrial constitutions, but as being

indicative of the change of spirit that has come over the Trade Union

world.

THE INCREASED RELIANCE ON DIRECT ACTION

The acceptance, during the last decade, by Parliament, by the Executive

Government, and by public opinion, of the Trade Union organisation as

part of the machinery of government in all matters concerning the life

and labour of the manual working class, has been coincident, some would

say paradoxically coincident, with an increased reliance on the strike,

commonly known as the method of Direct Action, and with an enlargement

of the purposes for which this method is used by Trade Unionists.

There is an impression in the public mind, which easily forgets its

previous impressions of the same kind, that we are to-day (1920) living

in an era of strikes. Although this impression is not justified

by the number of strikes, as compared with those of 1825, 1833-34,

1857-60, 1871-74, and 1885-86, there is some basis for the feeling. The

strikes and threats of strikes during the past decade (excluding the

four years of war) have been on a larger scale, and, in a sense, more

menacing, than those of previous periods. When we published, in 1897,

our detailed analysis of the theory and practice of contemporary Trade

Unionism (_Industrial Democracy_), the very term “direct action” was

unknown in this country. The strike was regarded, not as a distinct

method of Trade Union action, but merely as the culminating incident

of a breakdown of the Method of Collective Bargaining.[701] The Trade

Union plea for the right to strike has always been a simple one. It

is a mere derivative of the right of Freedom of Contract. Whenever an

individual workman had the right to refuse to enter or continue in a

contract of service, any group of individuals might, if they chose,

exercise a like freedom. After the collapse of Owenism and Chartism

all thought of using the weapon of the strike, otherwise than as an

incident in Collective Bargaining with the employers, seems to have

left the Trade Union Movement in Great Britain. Indeed, during the

last half of the nineteenth century, the use of the weapon of the

strike was falling into disrepute, even as an incident of Collective

Bargaining, not only among the officials of the great trade friendly

societies, such as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and Carpenters,

but also among the younger and more militant members of the Trade

Union movement. The “extremists” of the last decade of the nineteenth

century, as we have described in a previous chapter, were out for the

“capture” of Parliament and Local Authorities by an “independent” Party

of Labour; and political action was commonly regarded as the shortest

and most convenient way of securing not only Socialist but also the

distinctively Trade Union objects. It was at that time left to the

“reactionaries” in the Trade Union Movement, who disliked the idea of a

political Labour Party, to advocate reliance on “ourselves alone.”[702]

But with the revolution of thought that we have described there has

arisen, with regard to Direct Action, a change of practice. In 1913-14

there was an outburst of exasperated strikes designed, we may almost

say, to supersede Collective Bargaining--to repudiate any making of

long-term agreements, to spring demand after demand upon employers,

to compel every workman to join the Union, avowedly with the view

of building up the Trade Union as a dominant force. This spasm of

industrial “insurrectionism” was abruptly stopped by the outbreak of

war. The “political” element creeps in with the strikes and threats

of strikes of the Miners’ Federation in 1912 and 1919, designed, not

to further Collective Bargaining with the employers, but to cause the

Government and Parliament to alter the organisation of the industry,

in the earlier case by the enactment of a Minimum Wage law, and in the

other by the elimination of the capitalist profitmaker in favour of

public ownership and workers’ control. During the years of war Direct

Action took another form. The weapon of a concerted refusal to work was

used by some Trade Unions, in matters entirely unconnected with their

conditions of employment, in order to prevent particular individuals

from doing what they wished to do. The most sensational examples were

afforded by the National Union of Sailors and Firemen in 1917-18,

when its members, by refusing to work, at the dictation of Mr. J.

Havelock Wilson, the Secretary of the Union, prevented certain Labour

Leaders[703] from proceeding to Petrograd, actually by direction of

the Government; and subsequently others[704] from going to Paris with

Government passports, on the instructions of the Labour Party, because

the Union, or at any rate Mr. Havelock Wilson, disapproved of these

visits, and of their supposed object in arranging for an International

Labour and Socialist Congress. Another case was the withdrawal by the

Electrical Trades Union in 1918 of their members (taking with them

the indispensable fuses) from the Albert Hall in London, when the

directors of the Hall cancelled its letting for a Labour Demonstration,

of the purposes and resolutions of which they disapproved, or thought

that their patrons would disapprove. What the Electrical Trades Union

intimated was that, unless the Hall was allowed, as heretofore, to

be used for Labour meetings, it should not be used for a forthcoming

demonstration of the supporters of the Coalition Government, or for any

other meetings. The result was that (it is said on a hint from Downing

Street) the directors of the Hall withdrew their objection to the

Labour Demonstration, and have since continued to allow such meetings.

Yet another example of Direct Action was given by the printing staffs

of certain newspaper offices in London during the railway strike of

1919, when they threatened instantly to withdraw their labour, and thus

absolutely to prevent the issue of the newspapers, unless the use of

“lying posters” was given up, and unless the case of the National Union

of Railwaymen was fairly treated in the papers, and accorded reasonable

space. The gravest case of all was the threat by the Miners’ Federation

in 1919, that all the coal-mines might stop working unless Compulsory

Military Service was immediately brought to an end, and unless the

policy of military intervention in Russia against the Bolshevik

Government of Russia was abandoned. By what was perhaps a fortunate

coincidence the Secretary of State for War was able to declare that all

Compulsory Military Service was to cease at or before the end of the

current financial year; and the Prime Minister to announce that no more

troops, and, after certain consignments already arranged for, no more

military stores, would be sent in aid of those who were attacking the

Bolshevik Government.

How far can these instances of Direct Action be deemed to indicate

a change of thought in the Trade Union world with regard to the use

of the strike weapon? We must note that, in spite of the temporary

lull in strikes in the latter part of the last century, there has

been no change in Trade Union policy with regard to the strike in

disputes with employers about the conditions of employment. The Trade

Unions have always included in this term the dismissal of men for

reasons other than their inefficiency as workmen, the engagement of

non-Unionists, the presence of an obnoxious foreman or manager, or any

interference with the conduct of employees outside the works. Nor has

there been any development in the original Trade Union position with

regard to sympathetic strikes in aid of other sections of workers in

their struggles with their employers. It is possible that some of the

insurrectionary strikes of 1911-14 were inspired by the new thought

that we have described--the disillusionment as to the Parliamentary

potency of a Labour Party, and the vision of a Democracy based on

industrial organisation and secured by industrial action. But, in the

main, the increased frequency and magnitude of strikes in these years

are sufficiently accounted for by the continued fall in real wages due

to rising prices, combined with the steadily improving organisation

of the workers concerned. There was a new element in the proposal of

the Miners’ Federation in 1919 to strike if the Government did not

fulfil its pledge to carry into effect the Sankey Report described

in the last chapter. The significant and authoritative declaration

in the first Report of March 20, 1919, that “the present system of

ownership and working in the coal industry stands condemned, and some

other system must be substituted for it, either nationalisation or a

method of unification by national purchase and/or by joint control,”

and the explicit acceptance of this Report by the Government “in the

spirit and in the letter,” formed an integral part of the bargain

between the Miners’ Federation and the Government, on the strength of

which they forewent the strike at the end of March 1919 on which they

had decided. It can hardly be contended that the “present system of

ownership and working” is not a necessary part of the conditions of

employment, or that the Miners are not entitled to refuse to enter into

contracts of service under a system that Mr. Bonar Law agrees with

Mr. Justice Sankey, and nine out of the other twelve members of the

Royal Commission, in holding to “stand condemned.” On the other hand,

though the Government controls the industry and dictates the wages, the

alterations in the conditions of employment that the Miners’ Federation

asks for require not only one but probably several Acts of Parliament,

which a majority of the members of the present House of Commons,

notwithstanding the explicit Government pledge, refuses to pass. What

the Miners’ Federation threatens, by a stoppage of the coal industry,

is to coerce into agreement with them not their employers, the colliery

owners, not even the Ministry with whom they made the bargain, but, in

effect, the recalcitrant capitalist majority of the House of Commons

which cannot be displaced without a General Election.

But an entirely new development of Direct Action, alike in form and

in substance, is the distinctly political, or, as we should prefer to

call it, the non-economic strike--that is, the strike, not for any

alteration in the conditions of employment of any section of the Trade

Union world, but with a view to enforce, either on individuals, on

Parliament, or on the Government, some other course of action desired

by the strikers. So far as we know, there is, on this question, no

consistent body of opinion in the Trade Union world; all that we find

are currents of opinion arising from different assumptions of social

expediency. There is, first, a small section of Trade Unionists who

are Syndicalists or extreme Industrial Unionists in opinion, and who

look forward to the supersession of political Democracy, and the

reconstitution of society on the basis of the suffrages of the several

trades. Like the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, though on different grounds,

they do not acknowledge the competency of the existing Parliament to

undertake the government of the country, and they advocate Direct

Action as the only weapon of revolt accessible to the workers organised

as workers. But it was no such theory of social revolution that induced

Mr. Havelock Wilson to prevent the visit of Mr. G. H. Roberts and

Mr. MacDonald to Petrograd, when the Government wished them to go;

or to prevent Mr. Henderson and M. Camille Huysmans from using their

passports to Paris. Nor were the electricians of the Albert Hall

inspired by faith in an immediate revolution of the Russian type. It

cannot even be suggested that the widespread approval by the more

active spirits of the Trade Union world of the proposed strike to stop

the intervention of Great Britain in support of the reactionary Russian

leaders was accompanied by any desire to set up in Great Britain the

constitution which is believed to obtain in Moscow and Petrograd. We

must look elsewhere for the motive that underlies and is held by many

to justify the non-economic or “political” strike.

We suggest that the explanation is a more complex one. We have first

the impulsive tendency of some men in all classes to use any powers

that they possess, whether over land, capital, or labour, to dictate to

their fellow-men a course of conduct on any question on which they feel

hotly, even if it is wholly unconnected with their several economic

functions. This delight in an anarchic use of economic power is, it is

needless to say, not peculiar to those whose economic power is that of

labour. There have been innumerable instances, within our own memories,

among landlords and capitalists, of actions no less arbitrary than that

of Mr. Havelock Wilson (who, it must be remembered, had the general

approval of the capitalist press; and, in the case of the attempted

internment in this country of a distinguished Belgian visitor,

M. Huysmans, the connivance of the naval officers, if not of the

Admiralty). We find within the last few decades many cases of landlords

who have ejected persons, not because they were objectionable tenants,

or had failed to pay their rent, but because they had supported a

political candidate, or had led to action on the part of the Local

Authority, to which the landlord objected. We have seen landed

proprietors refusing sites for Nonconformist chapels, not because they

objected to buildings of that character, or were dissatisfied with the

price offered, but because they disliked the theology of the promoters.

We have heard of banks refusing to the Trade Unions who were their

customers any accommodation at all on the occasion of a strike, merely

because they disliked the strike. We have seen employers dismissing

workmen, not for their inefficiency, not even for their Trade Union

activities, which might be held to affect the economic interest of the

capitalist, but because the workmen held different political opinions

from those of the employer. But these cases of the use of economic

power to prevent individuals from pursuing or promoting their own

religious or political creeds are emphatically condemned by the Trade

Union Movement. Thus no Trade Union support was overtly given to Mr.

Havelock Wilson, even by those Trade Union leaders who agreed with him

in detesting any meeting between Britons and enemy subjects.

We have a quite different class of cases when Direct Action is taken in

reprisal for the Direct Action of other persons or groups of persons.

This was the case in the strike of the electricians at the Albert

Hall. It was a reprisal for the use by the directors of the Albert

Hall of their power over lettings to ban opinions that they happened

to dislike, whilst permitting the use of their hall to the other side.

A more difficult case is that of the threatened refusal to work of

the compositors against the newspapers who denied fair play to the

railwaymen. Here our judgement may depend on what view is taken of the

function of newspapers; how far are newspapers what their name implies,

the public purveyors of news? Supposing that all the capitalist press

were deliberately to boycott all Labour news, whilst deliberately

giving currency to false statements about Labour Leaders and the Labour

Movement, would the compositors, as representing the Trade Union world

in this industry, be justified in a strike? The only conclusion we

can suggest is that, human nature being instinctively militant, any

anarchic use of the power given by one form of monopoly will lead to a

similar anarchic use of the power given by another form of monopoly.

We come now to the third class of use of the method of Direct Action,

a general strike of the manual workers to compel the Government of the

country to abstain from political courses distasteful to those who

control a monopoly of labour power, or to the majority of them. This

form of Direct Action is justified by a minority of Trade Unionists,

who consider that under the present constitution of Parliament the

organised workmen have practically no chance of getting their fair

share of representation--an argument strengthened by every election

trick, and especially by the partisan use of the capitalist press as

an election instrument. The majority of Trade Unionists, however,

do not, at the present time, seem to support this view. They reply

that the manual workers and their wives now constitute, in every

district, a majority of the electorate. They can, if they choose,

return to Parliament a Labour majority and make a Labour Government.

This very consideration, indeed, seems to make any such general strike

impracticable, and, as a matter of fact, no such proposal of a general

strike has yet been endorsed by the Trades Union Congress. We can

imagine occasions that might, in the eyes of the Trade Union world,

fully justify a general strike of non-economic or political character.

If, for instance, a reactionary Parliament were to pass a measure

disfranchising the bulk of the manual workers, or depriving them of

political power by such a device as the “Three Class Franchise” of

Prussia and Saxony--if any Act were passed depriving the Trade Unions

of the rights and liberties now conceded to them--if the Executive

or the judges were to use against the Trade Unions, by injunction or

otherwise, any weapon that might be fished up from the legal armoury,

confiscating their funds or prohibiting their action--then, indeed,

we might see the Trades Union Congress recommending a General Strike;

and it would be supported not only by the wage-earning class as a

whole, but also by a large section of the middle class, and even by

some members of the House of Lords. That is one reason why, short

of madness, no such act would be committed by the Government or by

Parliament. If any such act were perpetrated, it would probably involve

a revolution not in the British but in the continental sense. It must

be remembered that the “last word” in Direct Action is with the police

and the army, and there not with the officers but with the rank and

file.

To sum up, the vast majority of Trade Unionists object to Direct

Action, whether by landlords or capitalists or by organised workers,

for objects other than those connected with the economic function

of the Direct Actionists. Trade Unionists, on the whole, are not

prepared to disapprove of Direct Action as a reprisal for Direct Action

taken by other persons or groups. With regard to a general strike of

non-economic or political character, in favour of a particular home or

foreign policy, we very much doubt whether the Trade Union Congress

could be induced to endorse it, or the rank and file to carry it out,

except only in case the Government made a direct attack upon the

political or industrial liberty of the manual working class, which it

seemed imperative to resist by every possible means, not excluding

forceful revolution itself.

THE DEMAND FOR THE ELIMINATION OF THE CAPITALIST PROFIT-MAKER

It is interesting to note that this widening enlargement of the

aspirations and purposes of Trade Unionism has been accompanied, not

by any decline, but by an actual renewal of the faith in Communal

Socialism, towards which we described the Trade Union Movement as

tending in 1889-94. For the Trade Unionist objects, more strongly than

ever, to any financial partnership with the capitalist employers, or

with the shareholders, in any industry or service, on the sufficient

ground that any such sharing of profits would, whilst leaving intact

the tribute of rent and interest to proprietors, irretrievably break up

the solidarity of the manual working class. To the new school of Trade

Unionists the nationalisation or municipalisation of industry, or its

assumption by consumers’ co-operation, is a necessary preliminary to

the partnership of Labour in its government. What they are after is to

alter, not only the status of the manual worker, but also the status of

the employer who is the director of industry; they wish them both to

become the agents of the community; they desire that manual workers and

brain workers alike should be inspired, not by the greed of gain made

by profit on price, but by the desire to produce the commodities and

services needed by the community in return for a sufficient livelihood,

and the personal freedom and personal responsibility which they believe

would spring from vocational self-government. Thus we find Mr. Hodges,

the General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation, in one of his numerous

speeches in favour of the nationalisation of the mines, declaring that

what they demanded was “a new status for the worker as a controller of

his industry. Miners were not anarchists, although they had the power

to be. They realised that their interests were bound up with those

of the community, and therefore they demanded conditions which would

develop the corporate sense.... Education was carrying men along social

rather than individualistic lines, and right throughout the mining

industry there was the desire to be something different from what they

were. This desire to be master of the work in which the man was engaged

was the great thing that was vital in working-class life.... There

had never been a movement born of greater moral aspiration than this

movement for the nationalisation of the mines. The miner wanted to be

in a position where it would be to him a point of honour not to allow

even a piece of timber to be wasted, where he would want to do his work

well. He wanted a Social Contract.”[705]

The demand for the nationalisation or municipalisation of industries

and services, or their absorption by the Consumers’ Co-operative

Movement, was greatly strengthened by the experience, during the war

and after the Armistice, of the failure of every alternative method

of preventing “profiteering.” The rapid development of capitalist

combinations and price-agreements[706]; the ill-success of the most

stringent Government control in preventing alarming increases of price;

the inability of even legally fixed maximum prices to do anything more,

under private ownership, than authorise the charge required to cover

the cost at the least efficient and least well-equipped establishment

of which the output was needed; the enormous and even unprecedented

profits made throughout the whole range of business enterprise; the

helplessness of the consumers, in the mere expectation of shortage,

and their willingness to pay almost any price that was demanded rather

than go without--combined with the obvious breakdown of capitalist

competition as a safeguard of the public which the proceedings under

the Profiteering Act revealed--all these things co-operated to convince

the bulk of the wage-earning class, many of the families living on

fixed incomes, and (in spite of the objection to “bureaucratic

control”) some even among business men, that there was practically

no other course open, in the industries and services that were

sufficiently highly developed to render such a course practicable, than

a gradual substitution of public for private ownership. This advance

in public opinion is naturally reflected in the passionate support of

public ownership, with participation of the workers in administration

and control, given by the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party

Conference.

It will have become clear from our review of the larger conception

now current of the place of Trade Unionism in the State, that the

Trade Unionist, as such, no longer retains the acquiescent and neutral

attitude towards the two great parties of British politics, nor to the

Capitalist System itself, which characterised the Trade Unionism of

thirty or forty years ago. The object and purpose of the New Unionism

of 1913-19--not without analogy with that of 1830-34, but with a

significant difference--cannot be attained without the transformation

of British politics, and the supersession, in one occupation after

another, of the capitalist profit-maker as the governor and director

of industry. Meanwhile, as a result of the successive attacks upon the

very existence of Trade Unionism, even in its most limited form, there

has been growing up a distinct political organisation of the Trade

Union Movement, aiming at securing the acceptance by the electorate,

as a whole, of a definitely Socialist policy in the administration of

both home and foreign affairs. It is this formation of a Labour Party,

ready for the carrying into effect of the new ideas, that we have now

to describe.

FOOTNOTES:

[651] William Abraham (South Wales Miners), J. Mawdsley

(Cotton-spinners), Michael Austin, M.P. (Irish Labour), and Tom Mann

(Amalgamated Society of Engineers).

[652] For the Labour Commission see its Report and Evidence, published

in 1892-94 in many volumes, the Report itself being C. 2421 of 1894. An

epitome was published as _The Labour Question_, by T. G. Spyers, 1894;

see also “The Failure of the Labour Commission,” by Mrs. Sidney Webb,

in _Nineteenth Century_, 1893. The Trade Unionist Minority Report had a

wide circulation as an Independent Labour Party pamphlet. It reads, in

1920, curiously prophetic of the actual legislative and administrative

changes that have taken place.

[653] For half a century after the repeal of the Combination Acts in

1824-25 the controversy as to the legal position of Trade Unionism was

always muddled up, in the minds of lawyers as well as economists and

the public, with that of physical violence. Because angry strikers here

and there committed assaults, and occasionally destroyed property,

it was habitually assumed, as it still is by some people thinking

themselves educated, that Trade Unionism practically depended on, and

inevitably involved, personal molestation of one sort or another.

This led magistrates, right down to 1891, occasionally to regard as

a criminal offence, under the head of “intimidation,” any threat or

warning uttered by a Trade Unionist to an employer or a non-unionist

workman, even if the consequences alluded to were of the most peaceful

kind. In 1891 a specially constituted Court of the Queen’s Bench

Division definitely laid it down that “intimidation,” under the Act

of 1875, was confined to the threat of committing a criminal offence

against person or tangible property (Memorandum by Sir Frederick

Pollock in Appendix to Report of Royal Commission on Labour, C. 7063;

see also _Law Quarterly Review_, January 1892; _Industrial Democracy_,

by S. and B. Webb, Appendix I., 1897; Gibson _v._ Lawson, and Curran

_v._ Treleaven, 1891, 2 Q.B. 545).

Magistrates continued, however, for some time to treat unfairly

such breaches of public order as “obstructing the thoroughfare”

or committing acts of annoyance to the public, when committed in

connection with a strike of which they disapproved, which would not

be proceeded against as criminal if they had been done by an excited

crowd of stockbrokers in the City, by the audience of a street-corner

preacher, or by a gathering of the Primrose League. Such discrimination

by the police or the magistrate is unjust.

[654] Mogul Steamship Company _v._ M’Gregor, Gow & Co. (1892), A.C.

25; Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society _v._ Glasgow Fleshers’

Trade Defence Association (1897), 35 Sc.L.R. 645; see _History of

Co-operation in Scotland_, by William Maxwell, 1910, p. 349.

[655] For all these cases see _Industrial Democracy_, by S. and B.

Webb, Appendix I., 1897; _Trade Union Law_, by H. Cohen and G. Howell,

1901; _The Law Relating to Trade Unions_, by D. R. C. Hunt, 1902;

_Trade Unions and the Law_, by G. F. Assinder, 1905; _The Present and

Future of Trade Unions_, by A. H. Ruegg and H. Cohen, 1906; Report of

Royal Commission on Trade Disputes, Cd. 2825, 1906; Temperton _v._

Russell (1893), 1 Q.B. 715; 62 L.T.Q.B. 412; 62 L.T. 78; 41 W.R. 565.

57. J.P. 676; Trollope and Others _v._ The London Building Trades

Federation and Others (1895), 72 L.T. 342; 11 T.L.R. 280; Pink _v._

The Federation of Trade Unions (1893), 67 L.T. 258; 8 T.L.R. 216, 711;

36 S.T. 201; J. Lyons and Son _v._ Wilkin (1896), 1 Ch. 811; the same

again (1899), 1 Ch. 255; Allen _v._ Flood (1898), A.C. 1; 67 L.J.Q.B.

119; 77 L.T. 717; 14 T.L.R. 125; 46 W.R. 258; 47 S.J. 149; 62 J.P. 595;

Quinn _v._ Leathem (1901), A.C. 495; 70 L.J.P.C. 76; 85 L.T. 289; 17

T.L.R. 749; 50 W.R. 139; 65 J.P. 708; W.N. 170. For foreign comments

see _La Situation juridique des Trade Unions en Angleterre_, by Morin

(Caen, 1907); _Le Droit d’Association en Angleterre_, by H. E. Barrault

(Paris, 1908); _Das englische Gewerkvereinsrecht seit 1870_, by F.

Haneld, 1909.

[656] Taff Vale Railway Company _v._ Amalgamated Society of Railway

Servants (1901), A.C. 426; 70 L.J.K.B. 905; 85 L.T. 147; 17 T.L.R.

698; 65 J.P. 596; 50 W.R. 44; Report of Royal Commission on Trade

Disputes, 1906, Cd. 2825; _The Law and Trade Unions: A Brief Review

of Recent Litigation, specially prepared at the instance of Richard

Bell, M.P._, 1901; _Statement by the Parliamentary Committee on the

Taff Vale Case_, 1902; _History of the British Trades Union Congress_,

by W. J. Davis, vol. ii. 1916, pp. 201-2; _Trade Union Law_, by H.

Cohen and George Howell, 1901; _The Legal Position of Trade Unions_,

by H. H. Slesser and W. S. Clark, 1912; _Industrial Democracy_, by

S. and B. Webb, Introduction to the 1902 edition, pp. xxiv-xxxvi.

It does not appear that, in the strictly legal sense, the Taff Vale

judgement was unwarranted. Though the Act of 1871 had been supposed to

prevent a Trade Union from being proceeded against, it contained no

explicit grant of immunity from being made answerable for any damage

that might be wrongfully caused. In fact, both the 1871 Act and that

of 1876 expressly provided that the registered Trade Union itself

should be liable to be brought into Court for the petty penalties

instituted for failure to supply the Registrar with copies of rules

and balance-sheets; and also that the trustees of a registered Union

should sue and be sued on its behalf. What the Act of 1871 did was to

relieve the Trade Union from its character of criminality by reason

of its purposes being in restraint of trade, and of its character of

illegality from the same cause; and to prohibit legal proceedings

directly to enforce certain agreements among its members, or between

it and its members, or among different Unions. These were assumed to

be all the cases that could arise. It seems to have been taken for

granted by the Minority of the Trade Union Commission of 1869, by

the Home Office in 1870-71, by the Parliament of 1871-76, and the

Royal Commission on Labour in 1893, that an unincorporated body could

not be sued for damages in tort any more than for a civil debt. But

in the following years, without any reference to Trade Unionism,

the Courts successively enlarged their procedure so as to admit of

any group of persons having a common interest being made parties to

a “representative action” (Duke of Bedford _v._ Ellis, 1901, A.C.

1, where the tenants of shops in Covent Garden were parties). This

enabled even an unregistered Trade Union to be sued (Yorkshire Miners’

Association _v._ Howden, 1905, A.C. 256). In 1893, and again in 1895,

actions against unregistered Trade Union organisations had been

maintained in the lower Courts (Trollope and Others _v._ The London

Building Trades Federation and Others, 1895, 72 L.T. 342; 11 T.L.R.

280; W.N. 45; Pink _v._ The Federation of Trades and Labour Unions,

etc., 1893, 67 L.T. 258; 8 T.L.R. 216, 711; 36 S.J. 201). But these had

not been noticed by the Trade Union Movement as a whole; and they had

not been seriously defended, not fully argued, and not carried to the

highest tribunal.

[657] The number of stoppages through disputes known to the Labour

Department of the Board of Trade, which between 1891 and 1899 had never

been fewer than 700 in a year, did not again reach this figure for a

whole decade; and sank in 1903-5--years during which trade was checked,

and some reduction of wages took place--to only half the number. Of the

135 claims to the Strike Benefit admitted by the General Federation of

Trade Unions in 1903, we read that “no less than 130 have been caused

by attempts on the part of employers to encroach upon the recognised

conditions prevailing in the particular trades” (_Fifth Annual Report

of the Federation_, 1904, p. 11).

[658] In addition, twelve workmen, mostly miners, were elected under

the auspices of the Liberal Party. Nearly all these came over to the

Labour Party in 1910 (_History of Labour Representation_, by A. W.

Humphrey, 1912).

[659] _Report of Royal Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade

Combinations_, Cd. 2825.

[660] 6 Edward VII. c. 47.

[661] Trade Unionists would be well advised not to presume too far on

this apparently absolute immunity from legal proceedings. It must not

be imagined that either the ingenuity of the lawyers or the prejudice

of the judges has been exhausted. It has already been urged that

the immunity of a Trade Union from being sued should be regarded as

implicitly limited to acts done in contemplation or furtherance of a

trade dispute; but such a limitation has so far been negatived (Vacher

_v._ London Society of Compositors, 29 T.R. 73). It is now suggested

that the immunity might one day be held to be limited to acts committed

by a Trade Union _in the exercise of its specifically Trade Union

functions_, or for the “statutory objects” of Trade Unions as defined

by the Act, and not to acts which the Court might hold to be beyond its

legitimate scope, or not specifically connected with what they might

in their wisdom consider to be the principal purpose of a Trade Union.

(But see Shinwell v. National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, 1913, a

decision of the Scottish Court of Session, limiting the liability of a

Union to reimburse its trustees for damages incurred by them.) Thus, a

new Taff Vale case, at a moment when public opinion was exceptionally

hostile to Trade Unionism, is by no means impossible. Similarly, Trade

Union officials should remember that their privileged position is

confined to a _trade dispute_, which, as specifically defined in the

Act, _does not include all strikes_; and what limits the Courts might

set to the phrase is uncertain. Moreover, the Trade Disputes Act does

not repeal other statutes; and Trade Union officials have been fined

for persuading sailors not to embark, in contravention of the Merchant

Shipping Acts. The Trade Disputes Act does not protect officials

committing illegalities other than those to which it expressly refers,

or under circumstances other than those indicated. See Valentine _v._

Hyde (1919); Conway _v._ Wade (1908), A.C. 506; Larkin _v._ Belfast

Harbour Commissioners (1908), 2 Ir.K.B.D. 214; _Legal Position of Trade

Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and W. S. Clark, 1912.

[662] A verbatim report of the proceedings (November 1908) in the Court

of Appeal in Osborne _v._ Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was

published by the defendants (Unity House, Euston Road, London). The

House of Lords’ judgement was given on December 21, 1909, when it was

widely commented on. The most convenient analysis is that by Professor

W. M. Geldart, _The Osborne Judgment and After_, 1910, and _The Present

Law of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions_, 1914. See “The Osborne

Revolution,” by Sidney Webb, in _The English Review_ for January 1911;

and _My Case_, by W. V. Osborne, 1910.

[663] _Political Theories of the Middle Ages_, by O. Gierke, with

introduction by F. W. Maitland, 1900; see also the works of J. N.

Figgis.

[664] _Firma Burgi_, by T. Madox, 1726, pp. 50, 279.

[665] _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1st edition,

1878, 2nd edition, 1890, p. 479.

[666] It should be recorded, as an instance of the prescience of Sir

Charles Dilke, that he is reported to have declared at the time that

“the trade union Acts were spoilt during their passage through the

House by the insertion of obscure definition clauses” (_Conflicts of

Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1890, p. 479).

[667] Whewell, _History of Scientific Ideas_, vol. ii. p. 120; J. S.

Mill, _System of Logic_, vol. ii. p. 276.

[668] George Howell, in his _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, 1890,

gives a list, three pages long, of Acts which, as he expressly

testifies from personal knowledge, were promoted or supported by the

Trade Unions; and in his _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and

Labour Leaders_, 1902, pp. 469-73, a still longer one.

[669] _Industrial Democracy_, pp. 124, 251, 258-60.

[670] _A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908.

[671] _Industrial Democracy_, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1897, pp.

838-40.

[672] For this reason the Trades Union Congress now refuses to

entertain any motion on this subject.

[673] If the main object of a newspaper is political, any expenditure

by a Trade Union upon it (including the purchase of shares) is itself

political (Bennett _v._ National Amalgamated Society of Operative

Painters (1915), 31 T.L.R. 203).

[674] 3 George V. c. 30.

[675] “The average weekly earnings of railway servants, as given by the

Board of Trade, were lower in 1910 than in 1907” (_Trade Unionism on

the Railways_, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917, pp. 21-22).

[676] _The Legal Position of Trade Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and W.

Smith Clark, 2nd ed., 1914; _The Present Law of Trade Disputes and

Trade Unions_, by Professor W. M. Geldart, 1914; _Entwicklung des

Koalisationsrechts in England_, by G. Krojanker, 1914; _An Introduction

to Trade Union Law_, by H. H. Slesser, 1919; _The Law of Trade Unions_,

by H. H. Slesser and C. Baker (to be published in 1920).

[677] Henry Broadhurst (Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons) was

Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (1885-86); and Thomas

Burt (Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Society) Parliamentary

Secretary to the Board of Trade (1892-95).

[678] For the facts as to Trade Unionism during the war, the most

convenient source is the _Labour Year Book_ for 1916 and 1919; see also

_Labour in War Time_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1915, and _Self-Government

in Industry_, by the same, 1917; the large number of Government

publications issued by the Local Government Board, the Board of Trade,

the Ministry of Labour, and especially the Ministry of Munitions,

together with the awards of the Committee on Production, most of

which are briefly noticed in the monthly _Labour Gazette_; the

monthly Circular (since 1917) of the Labour Research Department; the

unpublished monthly journal of the Ministry of Munitions; Reports

of the Trades Union Congress, 1915-19, and of the Labour Party

Conferences, 1914-19; publications of the War Emergency Workers’

National Committee; _The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions_, by

Sidney Webb, 1916; _Women in the Engineering Trades_, by Barbara Drake,

1917.

[679] _Compulsory Military Service and Industrial Conscription: what

they mean to the Workers_ (War Emergency Workers’ National Committee,

1915); _Memorandum on Industrial and Civil Liberties_ (Woolwich Joint

Committee on Problems arising from the War).

[680] The Government seems to have hoodwinked the public into believing

that 80 per cent of all the excess profits was the same thing as 100

per cent of the profits in excess of 20 per cent addition to the

pre-war profits.

[681] _Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry_, Cmd.

135, 1919. The Minority Report by Mrs. Sidney Webb was republished by

the Fabian Society, under the title of _Men’s and Women’s Wages: Should

they be equal?_, 1919.

[682] Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, 1919 (9 and 10 George V.

c. 42). During the first year after the cessation of hostilities the

problem of restoration did not assume so acute a form as had been

expected. A large part of the new automatic machinery which had been

introduced in 1915-18 was found to have been greatly deteriorated

by excessive working and had to be scrapped; there was an immediate

demand for ordinary engineering work of the old type; and the British

employers did not, in fact, set themselves at once to apply “mass

production” to the making of steam engines and motor cars, agricultural

implements and machinery generally, nor make any dramatic advances

in its application to the production of sewing-machines, bicycles,

and electrical apparatus. During 1919: the extensive readaptation of

the machine-shops, and the great demand for new tools (especially

machine-tools) facilitated the absorption, often in new situations, of

all the skilled engineers. There was, accordingly, little difficulty

in finding employment at good wages for practically all the skilled

workmen, and (except for temporary dislocations arising in consequence

of the disputes in coalmining, ironfounding, and other trades) the

percentage of members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and

other Unions of skilled craftsmen remained throughout the year at a

minimum. The great bulk of the “dilutees,” including substantially all

the women, received their discharge on the cessation of their jobs

of “repetition work” on munitions of war, the employers preferring,

in face of the immediate demand, to avoid trouble, to revert to the

old methods and to get back their former staffs, rather than engage

in the hazardous enterprise of reorganising their factory methods.

Hence, taking the engineering industry as a whole, the men got back the

work from the women; though not without some attempts at resistance

by individual employers, which were not persisted in; and not without

leaving the total number of women employed in 1920 in what might be

deemed their own branches of the engineering industry apparently double

that of 1913. Many of the male “dilutees” on discharge also reverted

to other employment, but some proportion of them, who had acquired

skill, and were members of various Unions admitting semi-skilled

workers, found employment in engineering shops on particular machines

or in particular jobs. There has apparently been a continuous increase

in the proportion of machines demanding less than full skill (such

as milling machines and small turret lathes), and therefore of

“semi-skilled” men in employment, without (owing to the expansion of

the industry as a whole) any reduction in the number of skilled men. In

face of the great demand for output, and of the fact that hardly any

members of the skilled Unions were unemployed, this fact did not evoke

objection. The position as regards the Premium Bonus System or other

form of “Payment by Results” was left unchanged. Few, if any, legal

proceedings were actually taken against employers in the Munitions

Courts under the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act. The employers

and the Government were, during the first half of the year, in a state

of alarm lest there should be a Labour uprising, which would seriously

interfere with the resumption of business; and great care was exercised

to avoid any disputes. Successive advances of wages were awarded to

meet the rising cost of living, and all rates were “stabilised” by

law, so as to prevent any employer from effecting a reduction, first

until May 20, 1919, then until November 20, 1919, and finally until

September 30, 1920; a new “Industrial Court” being set up by statute

(Industrial Courts Act 1919) empowered to give non-obligatory decisions

in any disputes that might be voluntarily referred to it--a measure

from which the Parliamentary Labour Party succeeded in eliminating

every implication of Compulsory Arbitration, Obligatory Awards, or

the Abrogation of the Right to Strike. But the difficulties are not

yet surmounted; and when there comes a slump in business, and skilled

engineers find themselves unemployed, the Government pledge will be

heard of again.

[683] See this noted in the report of the Parliamentary Committee in

the _Annual Report of the Trades Union Congress_, 1917.

[684] The “Whitley Report,” published early in 1917, when possibilities

of industrial and social “reconstruction” were much discussed, made

a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its

recommendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their

adoption throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining

from any suggestion of “profit-sharing, co-partnership, or particular

systems of wages,” the Report emphasised the importance of (_a_)

“adequate organisation on the part of both employers and employed”;

(_b_) the imperative need for a greater opportunity of participating

in the discussion about and adjustment of “those parts of industry by

which they are most affected” of the work-people in each occupation;

(_c_) the subordination of any decisions to those of the Trade Unions

and Employers’ Associations. Among the subjects to be dealt with by

the hierarchy of National, District, and Works Councils or Committees

were: (i.) “the better utilisation of the practical knowledge and

experience of the work-people ... and for securing to them a greater

share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the

conditions under which their work is carried on”; (ii.) “the settlement

of the general principles governing the conditions of employment ...

having regard to the need for securing to the work-people a share in

the increased prosperity of the industry”; (iii.) the methods to be

adopted for negotiations, adjusting wages, determining differences

and “ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of

earnings and employment”; (iv.) technical education, industrial

research, utilisation of inventions, and improvement of processes;

(v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years’

propagandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries,

such as agriculture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or

shipbuilding are unlikely to adopt the scheme; but two or three score

trades have equipped themselves either with “Whitley Councils”--the

District Councils and Works Committees are much more slow to form--or

with “Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committees,” which may be

regarded as provisional Councils, in such industries as pottery,

house-building, woollen manufacture, hosiery, heavy chemicals,

furniture-making, bread-baking, match-making, metallic bedstead

manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Government found

itself constrained, after an obstinate resistance by the heads of

nearly all the departments, to institute the Councils throughout the

public service. We venture on the prediction that some such scheme

will commend itself in all nationalised or municipalised industries

and services, including such as may be effectively “controlled” by the

Government, though remaining nominally the property of the private

capitalist--possibly also in the Co-operative Movement; but that it is

not likely to find favour either in the well-organised industries (for

which alone it was devised) or in those in which there are Trade Boards

legally determining wages, etc.; or, indeed, permanently in any others

conducted under the system of capitalist profit-making. See the series

of “Whitley Reports,” Cd. 8606, 9001, 9002, 9085, 9099, and 9153; the

Industrial Reports, Nos. 1 to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction;

the able and well-informed article, “La politique de paix sociale

en Angleterre,” by Élie Halévy, in _Revue d’Économie Politique_,

No. 4 of 1919; _Recommendation on the Whitley Report put forward by

the Federation of British Industries_, 1917; _National Guilds or

Whitley Councils?_ (National Guilds League), 1918. For the “Builders’

Parliament,” in many ways the most interesting of these Councils,

though as yet achieving only schemes in which the employers, as a

whole, do not concur, see _A Memorandum on Industrial Self-Government_,

by Malcolm Sparkes; _Masters and Men, a new Co-partnership_, by Thomas

Foster; and _The Industrial Council for the Building Industry_, by the

Garton Foundation, 1919.

[685] It must be remembered that the conditions of the manual worker’s

life dealt with by the Trade Unions up to 1894 included a wide

range of material circumstances and moral considerations. Besides

the maintenance of standard rates and methods of remuneration, the

reduction of the normal day, and payment for overtime, we find

among the objects of Trade Unions, as reported to the Commission,

the prevention of stoppages from wages; the maintenance of the

apprenticeship system and the keeping out of the trade all who are

not qualified; the abolition of the character note; the prevention of

victimisation; the provision of legal assistance to members in respect

of compensation for accidents; the establishment of an agency through

which employers may obtain efficient men; watching over the proceedings

of local boards and law courts; the enforcement of the Factory Acts and

other protective legislative enactments; the improvement of dietary

scales and house and shop accommodation where workers have to live in;

the collection and circulation of information on trade matters; the

establishment of benefit funds for unemployment, disputes, sickness,

accidents and death; the assistance of members anxious to migrate

or emigrate; the establishment of “that reciprocal confidence which

is so essential between workmen and masters,” and the promotion of

arbitration and conciliation; the regulation of output; the promotion

of friendly intercourse with workers of other countries; the assistance

of other trades in times of difficulty; and political action--the

support of Parliamentary and Municipal Labour candidates, of Trades

Councils, of the Trades Union Congress, and of Labour newspapers.

Some Unions decide to promote co-operative enterprise, “to secure the

legal recognition of the natural rights of labourers to the produce of

their toil,” whilst others promote the “moral, social, intellectual

and professional advancement” of the working class. “Trade Societies,”

state the rules of the Associated Shipwrights, “must be maintained as

the guard of workmen against capitalists until some higher effort of

productive co-operation has been inaugurated which shall secure to

workers a more equitable share of the product of labour.”

[686] _Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on Labour_: “Report of

Evidence from Co-operative Societies and Public Officials,” 1893, C

7063-1 (Q 2098, 2117-8).

Mr. Tom Mann was also in favour of the Consumers’ Co-operative

Movement, and had in those days a distinct bias for legal enactment

over direct action in determining the conditions of employment. “I

should have said,” he stated in the witness-chair, “that I, as a Trade

Unionist, am of opinion that in my capacity of citizen I have just

as full a right to use Parliament for the general betterment of the

conditions of the workers, of whom I am one, as I have to use the

Trade Union; and when I could use the institution of Parliament to do

that constructive work that I sometimes use the Trade Union for, and

could use Parliament more effectively than I could the Trade Union,

then I should favour the use of Parliament, not necessarily in order

to enforce men to do something which they might not wish to do, but

because it was the more effective instrument to use to bring about

changed conditions” (_Ibid._ Q 2531).

[687] An interesting sidelight is afforded by the reprobation by the

German Social Democratic Party, in 1894, of Eduard Bernstein for

translating our _History of Trade Unionism_, on the ground that Trade

Unionism had no place in the Socialist State, and that it was needless

to trouble about it!

[688] See, for convenient summaries, _Syndicalism in France_, by Louis

Levine, 1911, and _What Syndicalism Means_, by S. and B. Webb, 1912;

see also _American Syndicalism_, by J. Graham Brooks, 1913.

[689] _Socialism made Easy_, by James Connolly, 1905, pp. 13, 16-17.

[690] _The Miners’ Next Step_, 1912.

[691] _The Syndicalist_, January 1912. Column entitled, “What we

Syndicalists are after” (by Tom Mann).

[692] _The Industrial Syndicalist_, March 1911. “The Weapon Shaping”

(by Tom Mann; p. 5).

[693] _Ibid._, April 1911. “A Twofold Warning” (by Tom Mann). We are

concerned, in this volume, only with the effect of these new movements

of working-class thought upon British Trade Unionism, and this is not

the occasion for any complete appreciation of Syndicalism or Industrial

Unionism. The Syndicalist Movement in this country had died down

prior to the war, but the Industrial Unionist Movement simmered on in

the Clyde district and in South Wales. Its chief organisation is the

Socialist Labour Party, which is not, and has never been, connected

either with any other Socialist organisation in this country or with

the Labour Party that is described in the next chapter. It was, we

think, the moving spirits of the Socialist Labour Party who were, as

Trade Unionist workmen, mainly responsible for the aggressive action

of the Clyde Workers Committee between 1915 and 1918, and also for

the rise of the Shop Stewards Movement, and for its spread from the

Clyde to English engineering centres. At the present moment (1920) the

Socialist Labour Party, owing to the personal qualities of its leading

spirits, J. T. Murphy and A. MacManus, holds the leading position

in this school of thought, which received a great impulse from the

accession of Lenin to power in Russia. But it remains a ferment rather

than a statistically important element in the Trade Union world.

[694] The revival of the Owenite proposal to develop existing Trade

Unions into great Associations of Producers for the carrying on of

each industry must be attributed perhaps to Mr. A. J. Penty (_The

Restoration of the Gild System_, 1906), or to Mr. A. R. Orage, aided

by Mr. S. G. Hobson, in a series of articles in _The New Age_, 1911

(afterwards published in a volume, _National Guilds_, 1913, edited by

A. R. Orage). But _The New Age_ had a limited circulation in the Trade

Union world, and the plan proposed was not worked out in detail. The

idea was afterwards developed by Mr. G. D. H. Cole and his associates,

and widely promulgated in the Trade Union world. An organisation for

this propaganda, the National Guilds’ League, was started in 1915, and

has now a membership of several hundred, amongst whom are included

some of the younger leaders of the Trade Union Movement. It publishes

a monthly, _The Guildsman_, edited by Mr. and Mrs. G. D. H. Cole.

The various books by Mr. Cole--especially _The World of Labour_,

_Self-Government in Industry_, and _Labour in the Commonwealth_--should

also be consulted.

[695] _N.U.R. Agenda and Decisions of the Annual General Meeting_, June

1914, p. 7.

[696] The resolution runs as follows: “That in view of the success

which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the

working of the railways under State control, this Congress urge the

Parliamentary Congress to press the Government to arrange for the

complete nationalisation of all the railways, and to place them under

a Minister of Railways, who shall be responsible to Parliament, and

_be assisted by national and local advisory committees, upon which the

organised railway workers shall be adequately represented_” (_Trades

Union Congress Annual Report_, 1917, p. 345).

[697] _Postal and Telegraph Record_, May 22, 1919, p. 237.

[698] _Ibid._

[699] _The Nationalisation of Mines Bill_ (Fabian Tract, No. 171, 1913).

[700] The Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals Bill, 1919, given

in full in _Further Facts from the Coal Commission_, by R. Page

Arnot, 1919. The Miners’ Federation Conference of 1918 had passed the

following resolution: “That in the opinion of this Conference the

time has arrived in the history of the coal-mining industry when it

is clearly in the national interests to transfer the entire industry

from private ownership and control to State ownership with joint

control and administration by the workmen and the State. In pursuance

of this opinion the National Executive be instructed to immediately

reconsider the draft Bill for the Nationalisation of the Mines ... in

the light of the newer phases of development in the industry, so as

to make provision for the aforesaid joint control and administration

when the measure becomes law; further, a Conference be called at an

early date to receive a report from the Executive Committee upon the

draft proposals and to determine the best means of co-operating with

the National Labour Party to ensure the passage of a new Bill into

law” (_Report of Annual Conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great

Britain_, July 9, 1918, p. 44).

[701] At the end of our chapter on the “Method of Collective

Bargaining” we cursorily dealt with the strike as a necessary incident

of collective bargaining: “It is impossible to deny that the perpetual

liability to end in a strike or a lock-out is a grave drawback to the

Method of Collective Bargaining. So long as the parties to a bargain

are free to agree or not to agree, it is inevitable that, human

nature being as it is, there should now and again come a deadlock,

leading to that trial of strength and endurance which lies behind all

bargaining. We know of no device for avoiding this trial of strength

except a deliberate decision of the community expressed in legislative

enactment” (_Industrial Democracy_, p. 221).

[702] See, for instance, _Trade Unionism New and Old_, by George

Howell, 1891.

[703] Mr. G. H. Roberts (Typographical Society), then Parliamentary

Secretary to the Board of Trade; and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Treasurer

of the Labour Party.

[704] The Rt. Hon. Arthur Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders),

and M. Camille Huysmans, Secretary of the International Socialist

Congress.

[705] These extracts from a speech by Mr. Hodges are put together

from the separate imperfect reports in the _Times_, _Daily News_, and

_Daily Herald_ of October 27, 1919. A more explicit statement of Mr.

Hodges’ views will be found in his speech at the Annual Conference

of the Miners’ Federation in July 1918: “For the last two or three

years a new movement has sprung up in the labour world which deals

with the question of joint control of the industry by representatives

from the side which represents, for the most part, the consumer, and

representatives of the workmen, who are the producers. Nationalisation

in the old sense is no longer attractive. As a matter of fact, you can

have nationalisation, but still be in no better position than you are

now under private ownership. That is the experience of institutions

which have been State owned and State controlled for many years. The

most remarkable scheme worked out during the last year is the theory

worked out by the ... Postmen’s Federation. He has endeavoured to

provide a scheme by which the postal workers should have a definite

amount of control, a definite form of control, in the postal service,

and in working it out he has demonstrated beyond all doubt how at every

point he is up against the power of the bureaucrats, as exemplified

by the State. Now, is it any good to have these mines nationalised

unless we are going to exercise some form of control as producers? If

not, the whole tendency will be towards the power of bureaucracy. We

shall be given no status at all in the industry, except to be the mere

producers, as we have been in the past years. Under State ownership

the workmen should be desirous of having something more than the mere

question of wages or the mere consideration of employment; the workmen

should have some directive power in the industry in which they are

engaged. Now, how are we going to have this directive power under

State control? I think we must admit that the side representing the

consumers (the State) should have some form of control on property

which will be State property, and when a national industry becomes

State controlled you must have permanent officials to look after the

consumers’ interests, and from the purely producers’ point of view

the Miners’ Federation must represent the producers in the central

authority and in the decentralised authority, right down to the

separate collieries. Are we ready to do this? Are we prepared for this,

starting at the separate collieries, indicating how the industry is to

be developed locally? Men must take their share in understanding all

the relations embodied in the export side of the trade; they must take

a share even in controlling the banking arrangements which govern the

financial side of the industry, and with that comes a very great deal

of responsibility. Now, are we prepared to assume that responsibility,

a responsibility which is implied in the term workmen’s control? It is

going to be a big task and a test of the educational attainments of the

miners themselves if they assume control of the industry, and if it did

not thrive under that control there is the possibility we should have

to hark back to private ownership in order to make it successful....

I hold these views, and unless they are accompanied by an effective

form of working-class control, I do not believe that nationalisation

will do any good for anybody” (_Report of Annual Conference of the

Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, July 9, 1918_, pp. 49-51).

[706] Report of the Committee on Combinations and Trusts, 1919.