Chapter VII · (continued 2)

If the purely trade society is no new thing, still less is the extension of Trade Unionism to the unskilled labourer an unprecedented innovation. The enthusiasm which, in 1872, enrolled a hundred thousand agricultural labourers in a few months, produced also numerous small societies of town labourers, some of which survived for years before absorption into larger organisations. The London and Counties Labour League, established as the Kent and Sussex Agricultural and General Labourers’ Union in 1872, has maintained its existence down to the present day. The expansion of 1852 led to the formation in Glasgow of a Labourers’ Society, which is reputed to have enrolled thousands of members. But it is with the enthusiasm of 1833-34 that the movement of 1889-90 has in this respect the greatest analogy. The almost instantaneous conversion to Trade Unionism after the dock strike of tens of thousands of the unskilled labourers of the towns recalls, indeed, nothing so much as the rapid enrolment of recruits among the poorest wage-earners by the emissaries of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.

But however strongly the outward features of the wave of 1889-90 may remind the student of those of 1833-34, the characteristics peculiar to the new movement significantly measure the extent of the advance, both in social theory and social methods, made by the wage-earners in the two intervening generations. Time and experience alone will show how far the empirical Socialism of the Trade Unionist of 1889, with its eclectic opportunism, its preference for municipal collectivism, its cautious adaptation of existing social structure, and its modest aspirations to a gradually increasing participation of the workmen in control, may safely be pronounced superior in practicability to the revolutionary and universal Communism of Robert Owen. In truth, the radical distinction between 1833-34 and 1889-90 is not a matter of the particular social theories which inspired the outbursts. To the great majority of the Trade Unionists the theories of the leaders at either date did but embody a vague aspiration after a more equitable social order. The practical difference—the difference reflected in the character and temper of the men attracted to the two movements, and of the attitude of the public towards them—is the difference of method and immediate action. Robert Owen, as we have seen, despised and rejected political action, and strove to form a new voluntary organisation which should supersede, almost instantaneously and in some unexplained way, the whole industrial, political, and social administration of the country. In this disdain of all existing organisations, and the suddenness of the complete “social revolution” which it contemplated, the Owenism of 1833-34 found, as we have seen, an echo in much of the Socialist propaganda of 1884-89. The leaders of the New Unionists, on the contrary, sought to bring into the ranks of existing organisations—the Trade Union, the Municipality, or the State—great masses of unorganised workers who had hitherto been either absolutely outside the pale, or inert elements within it. They aimed, not at superseding existing social structures, but at capturing them all in the interests of the wage-earners. Above all, they sought to teach the great masses of undisciplined workers how to apply their newly acquired political power so as to obtain, in a perfectly constitutional manner, whatever changes in legislation or administration they desired.

The difference in method between the “New Unionism” of 1833-34 and that of 1889-90 may, we think, be ascribed in the main to the difference between the circumstances under which the movements arose. To Robert Owen, whose path was blocked on the political line by the disfranchisement of five out of six of the adult male population, open voting under intimidation, corrupt close corporations in the towns and a Whig oligarchy at the centre, the idea of relying on the constitutional instrument of the polling-booth must have appeared no less chimerical than his own programme appears to-day. The New Unionists of 1889-90, on the other hand, found ready for their use an extensive and all-embracing Democratic social structure, which it was impossible to destroy, and would have been foolish to attempt to ignore. The efforts of two generations of Radical Individualists and “Old Trade Unionists” had placed the legislative power and civil administration of the country in the hands of a hierarchy of popularly elected representative bodies. The great engine of taxation was, for instance, now under the control of the wage-earning voters instead of that of the land-owning class. The Home Secretary and the factory inspector, the relieving-officer and the borough surveyor, could be employed to carry out the behests of the workers instead of those of the capitalists. And thus it came about that the methods advocated by the New Unionists of 1889-94 resemble, not those of the Owenites of 1833-34, but much more the practical arts of political warfare so successfully pursued by the Junta of 1867-75.

We shall see the change which had come over the English working-class movement in the course of sixty years if we compare the leaders of the two movements which we have been contrasting. To Owen himself we may allow the privilege of his genius, which did not prevent him from being an extravagantly bad captain for a working-class movement. But in his leading disciples ignorance of industrial conditions, contemptuous indifference to facts and figures, and incapacity to measure, even in the smallest actions, the relation between the means and the end, stand in as marked contrast to the sober judgment of men like John Burns as they did to the cautious shrewdness of Allan and Applegarth. It would indeed be easy to find many traits of personal likeness between Burns and Mann on the one hand, and Allan and Applegarth on the other. High personal character, scrupulous integrity, dignity or charm of manner, marked all four alike, and the resemblance of character is heightened by a noticeable resemblance in the nature of their activity. The day’s work of Tom Mann at the head office of the Dockers’ Union from 1889 to 1892, and that of John Burns in the London County Council and the lobby of the House of Commons from 1892 to 1906, were close reproductions of Allan’s activity at the general office of his Engineers, and Applegarth’s assiduous attendance to Parliamentary Committees and Royal Commissions. In short, the ways and means of the leaders of the “New Unionism” remind the student, not of the mystic rites and skeleton mummery of the Owenite movement, but rather of the restless energy and political ingenuity of the Junta or the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee in those early days when the old Trade Unionists were fighting for legislative reforms with a faith which was as wise as it was fervent and sincere.

Some of the secondary characteristics of the New Unionism of 1889 promptly faded away. The revulsion of feeling against the combination of friendly benefits with Trade Union purposes quickly disappeared, though the difficulty of levying high contributions upon ill-paid workers prevented the complete adoption of the contrary policy.[576] The expansion of trade which began in 1889 proved to be but of brief duration, and with the returning contraction of 1892 many of the advantages gained by the wage-earners were lost. Under the influence of this check the unskilled labourers once more largely fell away from the Trade Union ranks. But just as 1873-74 left behind it a far more permanent structure than 1833-34, so 1889-90 added even more than 1873-74. The older Unions retained a large part, at any rate, of the two hundred thousand members added to their ranks between 1887 and 1891. But this numerical accession was of less importance than what may, without exaggeration, be termed the spiritual rebirth of organisations which were showing signs of decrepitude. The selfish spirit of exclusiveness which often marked the relatively well-paid engineer, carpenter, or boilermaker of 1880-85, gave place to a more generous recognition of the essential solidarity of the wage-earning class. For example, the whole constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was, in 1892, revised for the express purpose of opening the ranks of this most aristocratic of Unions to practically all the mechanics in the innumerable branches of the engineering trade. Special facilities, moreover, were offered by this and the other great societies to old men and artisans earning wages insufficient to pay for costly friendly benefits. Nor was this all. The plumber vied with the engineer, the carpenter with the shipwright, in helping to form Unions among the labourers who work with or under them. And the struggling Unions of women workers, which had originally some difficulty in gaining admittance to Trades Councils and the Trade Union Congress, gratefully acknowledged a complete change in the attitude of their male fellow-workers. Not only was every assistance now given to the formation of special Unions among women workers, but women were, in some cases, even welcomed as members by Unions of skilled artisans. A similar widening of sympathies and strengthening of bonds of fellowship was shown in the very general establishment of local joint committees of rival societies in the same trade, as well as of larger federations. Robert Knight’s failures to form a federal council representing the different Unions concerned in shipbuilding were retrieved in 1891 by his successful establishment of the Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, which maintained a permanent existence. The increased sense of solidarity among all sections of wage-earners, moreover, led to a greatly increased cordiality in international relations. The Coal-miners, the Glass Bottle Makers, and the Textile Operatives established more or less formal federations with their fellow-workers on the Continent of Europe. At the frequent international Congresses of these trades, as well as at the Socialist Congress of the workers of all countries, the representatives of the British Trade Unions largely laid aside that insular conceit which led the Parliamentary Committee of 1884 to declare that, owing to his superiority, the British Trade Unionist derived no benefit from international relations. All this indicates a widening of the mental horizon, a genuine elevation of the Trade Union Movement.

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