Chapter IX

THIRTY YEARS’ GROWTH [1890-1920]

In 1892, after more than two centuries of development, Trade Unionism in the United Kingdom numbered, as we have seen, little more than a million and a half of members, in a community approaching forty millions; or about 4 per cent of the census population and including possibly 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working wage-earners. At the beginning of 1920, as we estimate, the number of Trade Unionists is well over six millions, in a community that does not quite reach forty-eight millions; being over 12 per cent of the census population and including probably as many as 60 per cent[599] of all the adult male manual-working wage-earners in the kingdom. With the exception of slight pauses in 1893-95, 1902-4, and 1908-9, this remarkable growth in aggregate membership has been continuous during the whole thirty years.

It is important to notice the continuous acceleration of this increase. For a few years after the high tide of 1889-92 the aggregate membership dropped slightly. When in 1897 it started to rise again it took a whole decade to add half a million to the total of 1892-96. Three years more brought a second half million: a total growth in the eighteen years from 1892 to 1910 of about a million, or only about 66 per cent. It then took only three or four years to add another million; whilst during the last few years the increase has not fallen far short of half a million a year, or of the order of 10 per cent per annum. Trade Union membership has, in fact, doubled in the last eight years. [600]

No less significant is the fact that the increase has not been confined to particular industries, particular localities, or a particular sex, but has taken place, more or less, over the whole field. It is common in varying degrees to the skilled, the semi-skilled, and the unskilled workers. Even the women, still much less organised than the men, have in 1920 five or six times as many Trade Unionists as they had thirty years previously; and have trebled or quadrupled the then proportion of Trade Union membership to the adult women manual-working wage-earners. Financially, too, the Trade Unions have, on the whole, greatly advanced; and their aggregate accumulated funds in 1920 (apart from the assets of their Approved Society sections under the National Insurance Act) exceed fifteen millions sterling; being about ten times as much as in 1890, and constituting a “fighting fund” unimaginably greater than ever entered the mind of Gast or Doherty, Martin Jude or William Newton, or any other Trade Union leader of the preceding century. It is the stages and incidents of this past thirty years’ growth that we have now to describe. We shall refer incidentally to half-a-dozen of the more important strikes of the generation; but nowadays it is not so much industrial disputes that constitute landmarks of Trade Union history as the steps, often statutory or political in character, by which the Movement advances in public influence and in a recognised participation in the government of industry. During the present century, at any rate, the action of Trade Unionism on legislation, and of legislation on Trade Unionism, has been incessant and reciprocal. The growing strength of the Movement has been marked by a series of legislative changes which have ratified and legalised the increasing influence of the wage-earners’ combinations in the government both of industry and political relations. And every one of these statutes—notably the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, the Trade Boards Act of 1908, the Coal Mines Regulation (Eight Hours) Act of 1908, the National Insurance Act of 1911, the Trade Union Act of 1913, the Corn Production Act of 1917, and the Trade Boards Extension Act of 1918—have been marked by immediate extensions of Trade Union membership and improvements in Trade Union organisation in the industries concerned.

During the thirty years which have elapsed since 1890 the progress of the Trade Union Movement, enormous as it has been, has been accompanied by relatively little change in the internal structure of the several Unions. What has occurred has been a marked change in the relative position and influence of the different sections of the Trade Union world, and even in its composition. Some sections have declined relatively to others. Even more significant is the vastly greater consolidation of the Trade Unionism of 1920 than that of 1890. Not only have many more of the societies grown into organisations of numerical and financial strength, but there has also been developed, especially during recent years, an interesting network of federations among Unions in the same industry, and often among cognate or associated industries, some of which, undertaking negotiations on a national scale for a whole industry, have become more influential and important than any but the largest Unions.

The Cotton Operatives

The most notable of these changes is the decline in relative influence of the cotton operatives. It is not that the Unions of Spinners, Weavers and Card-room Operatives have decreased in membership or in accumulated funds. On the contrary, they have in the aggregate during the past thirty years more than doubled their membership; and the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, with three-quarters of a million pounds belonging to its 25,000 members (exclusive of 26,000 piecers), is, now as formerly, the wealthiest Trade Union of any magnitude. Nor have these Unions in any sense lost their hold on their own trade, at least in its central district of Lancashire and Cheshire, though its outlying areas in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Glasgow are still somewhat neglected. But the growth of Trade Unionism in other industries has reduced the “Cotton Men” from ten or twelve to four or five per cent of the Trades Union Congress; and, owing partly to internal differences, their leading personalities no longer dominate the counsels of the Movement. The excellent organisation of the Cotton Trade Unions has been maintained; but it has not been copied by other trades, and their internecine dissensions have detracted from the influence of their various federations. There has been, in fact, during the whole thirty years, only two or three important incidents. A general strike of cotton-spinners took place in 1893, when all the mills were stopped for no less than twenty weeks. The employers had demanded a reduction of 10 per cent, whilst the Trade Union urged that the depression should be met by placing all the mills on short time. This stoppage was at last brought to an end by agreement between the employers and the Trade Union, arrived at without external intervention in a fourteen hours continuous session, which made the reduction in rates only 7d. in the £ (2.916 instead of 10 per cent), and included elaborate arrangements for future adjustment of wages and other differences by mutual discussion without cessation of work.[601] This “Brooklands Agreement,” which we described in our Industrial Democracy, governed the spinning trade from 1893 to 1905, but was in the latter year formally terminated by the Unions concerned, on the ground that the machinery worked both slowly and in such a way as to hamper the operatives in obtaining the advantage of good times. Provisional arrangements were made, but these did not prevent a strike of seven weeks in 1908, which ended in a compromise advantageous to the operatives. Apart from minor and local disputes, frequently about bad material or refusal to work with a non-Unionist, there was, however, no forward movement, notably with regard to the hours of labour. In 1902 a slight amendment of the Factory Act was secured by agreement with the employers, by which the factory week was reduced from 56½ to 55½ hours; and with this the trade remained contented. Right down to 1919 there was no important trade movement, but in February of that year all sections of the cotton operatives claimed their share in the general reduction of hours that was proceeding; and, after prolonged negotiations, 300,000 operatives struck in June. When it was seen that the stoppage of the mills had become general, the employers gave way and conceded a Forty-eight Hours week, which has not yet been embodied in law, accompanied by a 30 per cent advance in piece rates so as to involve no reduction of earnings.

The organisation of the cotton operatives, whilst remaining essentially as described in our Industrial Democracy, has gone on increasing in federal complexity. The various sections—notably spinners with their attendant piecers; weavers, including winders, and in some towns also warpers, beamers, and reelers; card, blowing and ring-room operatives; warp-dressers and warpers; tape-sizers; beamers, twisters and drawers; and overlookers—continue to be organised in very autonomous local bodies, which are styled sometimes societies or associations, and sometimes merely branches, and which vary in number in the different sections from half-a-dozen to ten times as many. But these are nearly all doubly united, first in a federal body for the whole of each section (which may be styled an amalgamation, a federation, an association, or a General Union of the section), and also in a local “Cotton Trades Federation” or “Textile Trades Federation,” which combines the local organisations of the weavers and sometimes other sections in each of a couple of dozen geographical districts in Lancashire and Cheshire. The weavers’ “amalgamation,” and other sections of the “manufacturing” trade, are further united in the Northern Counties Amalgamated Association, with 175,000 members. Finally, all the federal organisations of the several sections are brought together in the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association, which focuses the opinion of all the cotton operatives, including the Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, on those fundamental issues on which they are conscious of a common and an equal interest. [602]

The officials of the Cotton Trade Unions—herein differing from those of the greatly developed General Union of Textile Workers, which has organised the (principally women) woollen weavers—have remained predominantly technicians, devoting themselves almost entirely to the protection of their members’ trade interests, without taking much part in the wider interests now largely influencing the Trade Union world, and showing little sympathy either in larger federations or in the new spirit. They have been slow to take an active part in the political development of the Trade Union world, which has manifested itself, as we shall describe in a subsequent chapter, in the organisation of the Labour Party. This backwardness may be ascribed, in some degree, to the political history of Lancashire, where an ancestral Conservatism still lingers, and where it was possible, even in the twentieth century, for so prominent a Trade Union official as the late James Mawdsley, the able leader of the cotton-spinners, to stand for Parliament in 1906 as a member of the Conservative Party. The influence of an exceptionally large proportion of Roman Catholics among the cotton operatives must also be noted. It is a unique feature of the technical officials of the Cotton Unions that they have frequently been willing to serve the industry as the paid officials of the Employers’ Associations when they have been offered higher salaries. Their main duty, whether acting for the employers or the workmen, is to secure uniformity in the application of the Collective Agreements as between mill and mill; and such a duty, it is argued, like that of the valuer or accountant, is independent of personal opinion or bias, and can be rendered with equal fidelity to either client. This was not at first resented by the workmen, who even saw some advantage in the Employers’ Association being served by officers thoroughly acquainted with the complicated technicalities as the operatives saw them. There has, however, latterly been a change of feeling; and though such transfers of services cannot be prevented (the Employers’ Associations constantly finding the Trade Union official the best man available), they are now resented. [603]

It is felt in some quarters that many of the “cotton men” have fallen out of harmony with the newer currents of thought in the Trade Union world. It is alleged that they accept too implicitly the employers’ assumptions, and do not sympathise with aspirations of more fundamental change than a variation of wages or hours. But the influence of the “cotton men” is, in the Trade Union world, still important for their specific contribution, to Trade Union theory and practice, of equal piecework rates for both sexes; of a rigid refusal to allow an employer to make the inferiority either of any workers or of any machines that he chooses to employ an excuse for deductions from the Standard Rate, and of the utmost possible improvement of machinery so long as the piecework rates are strictly controlled by Collective Bargaining and firmly embodied in rigidly enforced lists—points on which many Trade Unionists who would deem themselves “advanced” have not yet attained the same level. [604]

The Building Trades

The Building Trades have lost their relative position in the Trade Union world to nearly as great an extent as the cotton operatives. Thirty years ago their representatives stood for 10 per cent of the Trades Union Congress, whereas to-day they probably do not represent 3 per cent of its membership. They have, for a whole generation, supplied no influential leader. The only large society in this section, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, Cabinetmakers, and Joiners (133,000 members), has more than doubled its membership since 1890, drawing in various small societies of cabinetmakers, and carpenters, but not yet the older General Union of Carpenters and Joiners, which counts 15,000 members; and so, too, has the small but solid United Operative Plumbers’ Society, with 14,000 members—neither of them, however, commanding the allegiance of anything like the whole of its craft. The numerous small societies of painters have, for the most part, drawn themselves together in the National Amalgamated Society of Operative House and Ship Painters and Decorators (30,000 members); whilst the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association (12,500 members) represents a union of many small societies. Altogether the Trade Unions in the building trades, including all the little local societies, have probably done no more than double their membership of 1892, and the increase has been relatively least in the most skilled grades. This is due, in part, to an actual decline in the trade, the total numbers enumerated in the 1911 census being actually less than in that of 1901, the fall being even greater down to 1919, when it was estimated that only seven-twelfths as many men were at work at building as in 1901.

The story of the Building Trade Unions during the thirty years is one of innumerable small sectional and local disputes with their employers—taking the form, during 1913, of repeated sudden strikes in the London area against non-Unionists, forced on by the “hot-heads” and discountenanced by the Executive Committees, and leading, in 1914, to a general lock-out by the London Master Builders’ Association. The employers demanded that the Trade Unions should penalise members who struck without authority, and that the Unions should put up a pecuniary deposit which might be forfeited when a strike occurred in violation of the Working Rules. They also insisted on each workman signing a personal agreement to work quietly with non-Unionists, under penalty of a fine of 20s. In the lock-out that ensued the whole building trade of the Metropolis was stopped for over six months. Efforts at a settlement in June were rejected on ballot of the operatives; and whilst signs of weakening occurred among the operatives the National Federation of Building Trade Employers had decided on a national lock-out throughout the kingdom in order to secure the employers’ terms, when the outbreak of war brought the struggle to an end, and work was resumed practically on the old conditions.

During the war, when the bulk of the operatives were enrolled in the army, and building was restricted to the most urgently needed works, disputes remained in abeyance. At the beginning of 1918 a new start was made in the organisation of the industry by the establishment of a National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, itself a development from a previous National Building Trades Council, in which all the national Trade Unions, 13 in number, for the first time joined together. Notwithstanding great differences in numerical strength, the Unions agreed to constitute the Federation Executive of two representatives from each national union. The Federation is formed of local branches, each of which is composed of the branches in the locality of the nationally affiliated Unions, governed by the aggregate of the “Trades Management Committee” of such branches, acting under the direction and control of the Federation Executive. A significant new feature, recalling an expedient of the Trade Unionism of 1834, is the establishment of “Composite Branches” of individual building trades operatives in localities where no branch of the separate national unions exists. What success may attend this renewed effort at unified national organisation of the whole industry it is impossible to predict; there are signs of a movement for actual amalgamation. The four principal Builders’ Labourers’ Unions are on the point of uniting in a strong amalgamation with 40,000 members. Other attempts at amalgamation, including one among the “house builders,” the societies of bricklayers, masons and plasterers, have been voted. The Furnishing Trades Association was only prevented from merging in the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters by technical difficulties. On the other hand the separate Scottish and Irish Unions (except for the merging of the Associated Carpenters) stubbornly maintain their independence. Down to the present it must be said that combination in the building trades, torn by internecine conflicts and financially weakened by unsuccessful strikes, has, on the whole, been falling back. The gradual change of processes, and the introduction of new materials, with an actual decline in the numbers employed, has not been met by any improvement in the organisation of the older craft unions, whilst the workers in the new processes have failed to achieve effective union. With the great demand for building since the Armistice, the Building Trades Unions have, however, shown increased vitality; and the position in the negotiating Joint Boards, at which they are now regularly meeting the employers’ representatives, has considerably improved. The latest achievement of the industry is the establishment, jointly with the employers, of a “Builders’ Parliament”—largely at the instance of Mr. Malcolm Sparkes—which is the most noteworthy example of the “Whitley Councils,” to which we shall refer later.

Engineering and the Metal Trades

The large and steadily increasing army of operatives in the various processes connected with metals (who are combined in Germany in a single gigantic Metal Workers’ Union) can be noticed here only in its three principal sections, the engineering industry, boilermaking and ship-building, and the production of iron and steel from the ore.

Trade Unionism in the engineering industry, though it has, during the past thirty years, greatly increased in aggregate membership, notably among the unskilled and semi-skilled workmen employed in engineering shops, can hardly be said to have grown in strength, whether manifested in effect upon the engineering employers, who have become very strongly combined throughout the whole kingdom, or in influence in the Trade Union world. This relative decline must be ascribed to the continued lack of any systematic organisation of the industry as a whole; to a failure to cope with the changing processes and systems of remuneration which the employers have introduced; and to the persistence of internecine war among the rival Unions themselves.

The trouble in the engineering world came to a head in 1897, precipitated perhaps by the employers, who wanted, as they said, to be “masters in their own shops.” The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which had maintained its predominant position among the engineering workmen, but only commanded the allegiance of a part of them, after a series of bickerings with the employers about the technical improvement of the industry, in which the workmen had shown themselves, to say the least, very conservative, found itself involved in a general strike and lock-out in all the principal engineering centres, nominally about the London engineering workmen’s precipitate demand for an Eight Hours Day, but substantially over the employers’ insistence on being masters in their own workshops, entitled to introduce what new methods of working they chose, and whatever new systems of remuneration according to results that they could persuade the several workmen to accept. The Union, to which apparently it did not occur to use the methods of publicity on which William Newton and John Burnett would have relied, failed to make clear its case to the public; and public opinion was accordingly against the engineering workmen, believing them to be at the same time obstructive to industrial improvements and unable to formulate conditions that would safeguard their legitimate interests. The result was that the prolonged stoppage, which reduced the funds of the A.S.E. down to what only sufficed to meet the accrued liabilities for Superannuation Benefit, ended in a virtual victory for the employers. The A.S.E. quickly resumed its growth and stood, in the autumn of 1919, at 320,000 members, or over five times its membership of 1892. But the sectional societies also increased in size, and down to 1919 they counted in the aggregate, as in 1892, about half as many members as the A.S.E. itself.[605] Meanwhile, the great development of the engineering industry, and the successive changes in the machinery employed, have been accompanied by the introduction of various forms of “Payment by Results,” in which the engineering Trade Unions have not known how to prevent the reintroduction of individual bargaining. Owing to its quarrels with the various sectional societies in the industry, the A.S.E. has been alternately in and out of the Trades Union Congress; and, on general issues, has seldom sought to influence the Trade Union world as much as its magnitude and position would have entitled it to do. The same may be said of the other Trade Unions in the engineering industry, which were contented to hold their own against their greater rival, and to see their membership progress with the growth of the industry itself.

The elaborate constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which we described in a preceding chapter, has been, during the past thirty years, repeatedly tinkered with by delegate meetings, but without being substantially changed. There has been a perpetual balance and deadlock of opinion, which has led to successive modifications and reactions. Alongside the skilled engineering craftsmen, of different specialities in technique, there has grown up a vast number of unapprenticed and semi-skilled men, whom the Union has failed to exclude, not only from the workshops but also from the jobs formerly monopolised by the legitimate craftsmen. Should these interlopers be admitted to membership? At one delegate meeting (1912) the rules were altered so as to admit (“Class F”) not only all varieties of skilled engineering craftsmen, but also practically any one working in an engineering shop. This was counteracted by the tacit refusal of most branches to carry out the decision of their own delegates; and “Class F,” which never obtained as many as 2000 members, was abolished by the next delegate meeting (1915.) The method of remuneration has been another bone of contention. Especially since the disastrous conflict of 1897, the employers have more and more insisted on the adoption of systems of “payment by results” instead of the weekly time rates, to which the engineering operatives, like those of most of the building trades, devotedly cling. What is to be the Union policy with regard to these varieties of piecework and “premium bonus” systems? Failing to discover any device by which (as among the cotton operatives, the boot and shoe makers, and the Birmingham brassworkers) “payment by results” can be effectively safeguarded by being subjected to collective bargaining, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has wavered, in its decisions and in the policy of its various districts, between (a) refusing to allow any other system than timework; (b) limiting systems of payment by results to “those shops in which they have already been introduced”; (c) insisting, as a condition of permitting payment by results, on the “Principle of Mutuality,” which amounts to no more than the claim that the workman shall not have the piecework rates or “bonus times” arbitrarily imposed upon him, but shall be permitted individually to bargain with the foreman or rate-fixer for better terms. The result is a chaos of inconsistent customs and practices varying from shop to shop; and withal, a tendency to a continuous decline in piecework rates (mitigated only by the greater or less extent to which collective “shop bargaining” prevails, and by its efficiency) which leads, in sullen resentment, to “ca’ canny,” or slow working. The third bone of contention has been how to deal with the competing Trade Unions, which are either societies of varieties of skilled engineers who prefer to remain unabsorbed in the A.S.E., or societies of new classes of operatives such as machine workers, workers in brass and copper, electrical craftsmen, and others, with whom the A.S.E. found itself disputing the control of the industry. Should these much smaller organisations be (a) ignored and their members treated as non-unionists; or (b) admitted to joint deliberation and action in trade matters with the view to formulating a common policy; or (c) dealt with by amalgamation on a still broader basis than that of the A.S.E.? It would be useless to trace the results of the ebb and flow of these contrary views, which were, in the autumn of 1919, for the time being, partly reconciled by an agreement by which six of the competing Unions[606] are in 1920, with the A.S.E., to be merged in the Amalgamated Engineering Union with a membership of 400,000 and accumulated funds amounting to nearly four millions sterling. It remains to be seen whether this wider amalgamation will bring to engineering Trade Unionism the formulation of a systematic policy, national organisation, and competent leadership.

Underlying all these issues, and aggravating all the disputes to which they give rise, is the fundamental divergence between those who insist on an extreme local autonomy—the district being free to strike, and free to refuse to settle a local strike,—and those who maintain the importance of a national unity in trade policy, and the necessity, with centralised funds, of centralised control. Still more keen is the controversy between those who wish to maintain the present craftsmen’s organisation, and those who seek to enlarge it into an organisation comprising all the workers in the industry, whether skilled or unskilled. During the past decade the discontent against the Central Executive, especially on the Clyde, has led to a so-called “rank and file” movement; the development of the shop steward from a mere “card inspector” and membership recruiting officer into an aggressive strike leader; and the joining together of the shop stewards (as at Glasgow, Sheffield, and Coventry) into such new forms of organisation as the “Clyde Workers’ Committee,” actively promoting their own local trade policies irrespective of the views of the Union as a whole.

The “Shop Stewards’ Movement,” which assumed some importance in the engineering industry in 1915-19, was a new development of an old institution in Trade Unionism—we have referred elsewhere to the “Father of the Chapel” among the compositors, and to the checkweighman among the coal-miners—which acquired a special importance owing to the growing lack of correspondence between the membership of the Trade Union Branch or District Council and the grouping of the workmen in the different establishments, and also from the fact that the workmen in each establishment found themselves belonging to different Trade Unions. “The shop steward,” it has been pointed out, “was originally a minor official appointed from the men in a particular workshop and charged with the duty of seeing that all the Trade Union contributions were paid. He had other small duties. But gradually, as the branch got more and more out of touch with the men in the shop, these men came to look to the official who was on the spot to represent their grievances. During the war the development of the shop steward movement was very rapid, particularly in the engineering industry. In some big industrial concerns, composed of a large number of workshops, the committees of stewards from the various shops very largely took over the whole conduct of negotiations and arrangement of shop conditions. Further, a national organisation of shop stewards was formed, at first mainly for propagandist purposes. The existing unions have considered some of the activities of shop stewards to be unofficial, and there has been a good deal of dissension within the unions on this score. Attempts have been made to reach an agreement by which Shop Stewards’ Committees shall be fully recognised at once by the unions and by the managements. So far there has been no final settlement. An agreement was made in the early summer of 1919 between the Engineering Employers’ Federation and the Unions; how this will work in practice is not yet certain.” [607]

It must, in fact, be said that although the Engineering Trade Unions have during the past thirty years not taken much part in general Trade Union issues, they have (in contrast with some other sections) contributed freely in both men and ideas. We have already dwelt upon the activities of Mr. John Burns and Mr. Tom Mann. We shall mention the political progress of Mr. George Barnes, who is also of the A.S.E.; whilst the Friendly Society of Ironfounders has given Mr. Arthur Henderson to the Movement. And, in the long run possibly more important even than men, the ideas emanating from the engineering workshops have had a more than proportionate share in the ferment of these years. The vacancy in the office of General Secretary, occasioned by the election to the House of Commons of Mr. Robert Young, was filled in the autumn of 1919 by the election of Mr. Tom Mann; and this election, together with the great amalgamation of competing Unions brought about at the same time, may perhaps open up a new era in engineering Trade Unionism.

In contrast with the failure of Trade Unionism in the engineering trades either to develop a systematic organisation or to cope with the changes in processes and methods of remuneration, the two powerful Unions of boilermakers and shipwrights have gone from strength to strength, doubling their numbers, absorbing practically all the remaining local societies in their industry, and closely combining with each other in policy and other activities, concluding, indeed, in the autumn of 1919 an agreement to submit to their respective memberships a proposal for a formal amalgamation which may be joined by the strong society of Associated Blacksmiths. This would mean the consolidation, in one powerful Union of 170,000 members, of practically all the skilled craftsmen working in the construction of the hulls of ships, of boilers and tanks, and of steel bridge-work of all sorts. Concentrated largely in the ports of the north-east coast and those of the Clyde, with strong contingents in the relatively small number of other shipbuilding centres, the boilermakers and shipwrights have held their own in face of all the changes in their industry, and have known how to maintain a fairly uniform national policy.

Passing from engineering and shipbuilding to the smelting of the iron and steel from the ore, the one marked advance in organisation is that of the British Steel Smelters, which, established in 1886, and in 1892 having still only 2600 members, had by 1918, under the prudent leadership of Mr. John Hodge, drawn to itself over 40,000. The British steel smelters have the credit of equipping themselves with the most efficient office in the Trade Union world, with a real statistical department and a trained staff, including, for all their legal business, especially that connected with compensation for accidents, a qualified professional solicitor. Already before the outbreak of war a far-seeing policy of amalgamation had been virtually decided on; and in 1915 a scheme was prepared for the merging of all the six important Unions in the industry of obtaining the metal from the ore, including the operatives in the tinplate and rolling mills. The plan for surmounting the legal and other difficulties of amalgamation, of which we may ascribe the authorship to Mr. John Hodge, Mr. Pugh, and Mr. Percy Cole, the able officials of the British Steel Smelters’ Union, was one of extreme ingenuity as involving no more than a bare majority of the members voting, which deserves the attention of other societies as a “New Model.” Three only out of the six societies (the British Steel Smelters’ Association, the Associated Iron and Steel Workers of Great Britain, and the National Steel Workers’ Association) were able to go forward in 1917,[608] when a new society, the British Iron, Steel, and Kindred Trades Association, was formed. The four societies then created the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, to which they formally ceded powers and functions affecting the members of more than one of the constituent bodies, and therefore all general negotiations with the employers. The three old societies continued formally in existence, but they bound themselves not to enrol any new members, who were all to be taken by the new society, to which all the existing members were to be continuously urged to transfer themselves voluntarily. This process has already gone so far that the new society has swallowed up the British Steel Smelters’ Society, which has been wound up and completely merged in the new body, into which the empty shells of the other two old bodies will presently fall. The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation will then be composed of one society only, and may be kept alive only to serve the same transitional purpose for other incoming societies.

The Compositors

The printing trades have remained, during the past thirty years, curiously stationary so far as Trade Unionism, is concerned, the London Society of Compositors, the Typographical Association, the Scottish Typographical Association, and the Dublin Typographical Society having, in the aggregate, increased their membership by three-fifths and steadily increased their rates of pay and strategic strength against their own employers, but commanding little influence in the Trade Union Movement as a whole, and in many small towns still leaving a considerable portion of the trade outside their ranks. The less-skilled workers in the papermaking and printing establishments have greatly improved their organisation; and the National Union of Printing and Paper Workers and the Operative Printers Assistants’ Society—both of them including women as well as men—have become large and effective Trade Unions. All the societies are united in the powerful Printing and Kindred Trades Federation, to which the National Union of Journalists, now a large society, has recently affiliated.

Boot and Shoemaking

Among the other constituents of the Trade Union world in which a relative decline in influence is to be noted, is that of the boot and shoemakers. Thirty years ago the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives had achieved a position of great influence in the trade. It had joined with the Employers’ Associations in building up, as described in our Industrial Democracy, an elaborate system of Local Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, united in a National Conference of dignity and influence, with resort to Lord James of Hereford as umpire, by means of which stoppages of work were prevented, and, more important still, the illegitimate use of boy labour was restrained and standard piecework rates were arrived at by collective bargaining, and authoritatively imposed on the whole trade. In 1894 the whole machinery was broken up, at the instance of the very employers who had agreed to it, and had co-operated for years in its working, because they found that, under the rules and at the piecework rates prescribed, the men were “making too much.”

After a prolonged stoppage in 1894 the dispute was patched up by the intervention of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade; and the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, with 80,000 members, has, on the whole, held its own with the employers, with less elaborate formal relations; but the work of the Union is impaired by the weakness of the organisation in the smaller workshops and the less important local centres of the trade.

On the other side, we have the rise to influence, not only in the Trade Union counsels but also in those of the nation, of the Women Workers, the General Labourers, the “black-coated proletariat” of shop assistants, clerks, teachers, technicians, and officials, the miners and the railwaymen, which has been the outstanding feature of the past thirty years.

Women Workers

In no section of the industrial community has the advance of Trade Unionism during the last thirty years been more marked than among the women workers. For the first half of this period, indeed—though the aggregate women membership of Trade Unions approximately doubled—this meant only a rise from about 100,000 in 1890 to about 200,000 in 1907, mostly in the textile industries; and the number of women Trade Unionists outside those industries was in the latter year still under 30,000. But the long-continued patient work of the Women’s Trade Union League was having its effect; and the idea of Trade Unionism was being established among the women workers in many different industries. Much is to be ascribed to the efforts during these years of Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, who were unwearied in their assistance. In 1909, largely at the instance of Sir Charles Dilke and the women’s leaders, especially Miss Mary Macarthur, Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, and Miss Susan Lawrence, Mr. Winston Churchill, as President of the Board of Trade, carried through Parliament the Trade Boards Bill, which enabled a legal minimum wage to be prescribed by joint boards in four specially low-paid industries, in which mainly women were employed. This measure not only considerably improved the position of the sweated workers in the chain and nail trades, the slop tailoring trade, paper box making and machine lace-making, but—as had been predicted on one side and denied on the other—greatly stimulated independent organisation among the women whose industrial status was raised. The extension of the Trade Boards and of the legal minimum wage in 1913 to half a dozen other trades had like effects, and the further extension of 1918 is already promising in the same direction. Trade Union membership was further greatly increased during 1912-14 as a result of the National Insurance Act, which brought many thousand recruits to the Approved Society sections of the Unions. It was, however, the Great War, with its unprecedented demand for women workers, and their admission, in “dilution” of or in substitution for men, to all sorts of occupations and processes into which they had not previously penetrated, at earnings which they had never before been permitted to receive, that brought the women into Trade Unionism by the hundred thousand. The National Federation of Women Workers—the largest exclusively feminine Union—rose from 11,000 in 1914 to over 60,000 in 1919. A small number of new Trade Unions exclusively for women were established in particular sections, such as the interesting little society of Women Acetylene Welders. The bulk of the women, however, continued to be organised in Trade Unions admitting both sexes. Besides the various Textile Unions, there are now thousands of women in the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks’ Association, Boot and Shoe Operatives, and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. Most of the general labour Unions, and others like the National Union of Printing and Paper Workers, the National Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative and Commercial Employees and Allied Workers, had for a couple of decades been enrolling women members; and the female membership of these societies now grew by leaps and bounds. But the greater part of the field of women’s employment is still uncovered. In 1920, though it may be estimated that the total women membership of Trade Unions is nearly three-quarters of a million, this still represents less than 30 per cent of the adult women wage-earners.

The outstanding feature in women’s Trade Unionism during the past decade has been its advance, not merely in numbers and achievements, but also in status and influence. This has come with accelerating speed. To the first Treasury Conference in 1915, at which the Government sought the help of the Trade Unions in the winning of the war, it apparently did not occur to any official to invite the National Federation of Women Workers; but in all subsequent proceedings of the same nature Miss Mary Macarthur and Miss Susan Lawrence, on behalf of the women Trade Unionists in this and other societies, occupied a leading position. Whether before the Munitions Act Tribunals, the Committee on Production, or the Special Arbitration Tribunal set up by the Government to deal with the conditions of employment of women munition-workers, the women’s case, whether put by the representatives of the Women’s Unions, or by those of the principal Unions of general workers that included women, was so ably conducted as to secure for the women workers, almost for the first time, something like the same measure of justice as that which the men had wrested from the employers for themselves. The result was not only a marked rise in the standard of remuneration for women, the opening up to them of many fields of work from which they had hitherto been excluded, and a general improvement in their conditions of employment, but also a rapid development of Trade Unionism among them—nine-tenths of the women Trade Unionists being in societies enrolling both men and women—and the winning, for women’s Trade Unions, of the respect of the Trade Union world. For the first time a woman was elected in 1919 by the Trades Union Congress to its Parliamentary Committee, Miss Margaret Bondfield, of the National Federation of Women Workers, receiving over three million votes. On the reconstitution in 1918 of the Labour Party, in which women had always been accorded equal rights, provision was made so that there should always be at least four women elected to the Executive Committee. A Standing Joint Committee of Women’s Industrial Organisations, established in 1916, now initiates and co-ordinates the action of the principal women’s Trade Unions, the Women’s Co-operative Guild (which organises the women of the Co-operative movement), the Railway Women’s Guild, composed of the wives of railwaymen, and the Women’s Labour League, now the women’s section of the Labour Party itself.

The General Workers

In 1888 the leaders of the skilled craftsmen and better-paid workmen were inclined to believe that effective or durable Trade Unionism among the general labourers and unskilled or nondescript workmen was as impracticable as it had hitherto proved to be among the mass of women wage-earners. The outburst of Trade Unionism among the dockers and gasworkers in 1888-89 was commonly expected to be as transient as analogous movements had been in 1834 and 1871. In 1920 we find the organisations of this despised section, some of them of over thirty years’ standing, accounting for no less than 30 per cent of the whole Trade Union membership, and their leaders—notably Mr. Clynes, Mr. Thorne, and Mr. Robert Williams—exercising at least their full share of influence in the counsels of the Trade Union Movement as a whole. For a few years after 1889, indeed, the aggregate membership of the newly-formed labourers’ Unions declined, and some of the weaker ones collapsed, or became merged in the larger societies. But the Gas-workers’ and General Labourers’ Union (established 1889), which changed its name in 1918 to the National Union of General Workers; and the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union (established 1887) maintained themselves in existence; and already in 1907 there were as many as 150,000 organised labourers in half-a-dozen well-established societies. The outburst of Trade Unionism among the farm labourers in 1890 gradually faded away. But in 1906 a new society, the National Agricultural Labourers and Rural Workers’ Trade Union, was formed, which at once made headway in Norfolk and the adjacent counties; to be followed in 1913 by the energetic Scottish Farm Servants’ Trade Union. Organisation was, between 1904 and 1911, steadily extending in all directions, when the passing of the National Insurance Act, which practically compelled every wage-earner to join an “Approved Society” of some kind, led to a dramatic expansion of Trade Union membership, from which the various Unions of general workers, as they now prefer to be styled, obtained their share of advantage. The Workers’ Union, in particular, which had been established in 1898, for the enrolment of members among the nondescript and semi-skilled workers of all sorts not catered for by the craft Unions, had, after twelve years’ existence, only 5000 members in 111 branches in 1910, but grew during 1911-13 to 91,000 members in 567 branches. In three years more it stood at 197,000 members in 750 branches, and by the end of 1919 its membership had risen to about 500,000 in nearly 2000 branches, comprising almost every kind and grade of worker, of any age and either sex, from clay-workers and tin miners to corporation employees and sanitary inspectors, from domestic servants and waiters to farm labourers and carmen, and every kind of nondescript worker in the factory, the yard, or on the road. The organising of the rural labourers has been shared by nearly all the principal Unions of General Workers. The passing of the Corn Production Act in 1917, with its incidental establishment of Joint Boards in every county of the United Kingdom, empowered to fix a legal minimum wage for a prescribed normal working day, had the result of greatly extending Trade Union membership among all sections of agricultural labourers, who are now (1920), for the first time in history, more or less organised in every county of Great Britain—partly in the very successful Agricultural Labourers’ Union, which had, at the end of 1919, 180,000 members in no fewer than 2700 branches; partly in the Workers’ Union, which has a large number of agricultural branches; partly in the National Union of General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union, and the National Amalgamated Union of Labour; in all the Scottish counties, in the powerful Scottish Farm Servants’ Union; whilst in Ireland the agricultural wage-earners have been enrolled in the Transport and General Workers’ Union. The total number of agricultural labourers in Trade Unions in 1920 probably reaches more than three hundred thousand, being about one-third of the total number of men employed in agriculture at wages.

Throughout the years of war the membership of the various Unions classified under the head of Transport and General Labour (including the dockers and seamen), which in 1892 was only 154,000, continued to increase by leaps and bounds until, in 1920, their aggregate membership considerably exceeds that of the entire Trade Union world of 1890, and does not fall far short of a couple of millions.

Of recent years there has been a steady pressure towards amalgamation and consolidation of forces. Many small and local Unions have been merged, and several of the larger bodies seem to be on the point of union. Meanwhile the movement towards closer federation is strong. In 1908 all the big general Labour Unions became associated in the General Labourers’ National Council, a useful consultative body, having for its principal function the prevention of overlapping and conflict among the different Unions. It was successful in arranging for freedom of transfer and mutual recognition of each other’s membership among its constituent Unions, and in promoting a certain amount of demarcation of spheres, and even of amalgamation. This Council in May 1917 developed into a National Federation of General Workers, which includes eleven important general Unions of General Workers, having an aggregate membership of over 800,000. This important federation took a significant step towards unification in November 1919, in appointing ten District Committees, consisting of two representatives of each of the affiliated societies, charged to consult with regard to any local trade dispute involving more than one society.

Recent years have seen the rise of a new grouping. The several Unions of seamen, lightermen, dock and wharf labourers, coal-porters and carmen have asserted themselves as Transport Workers, seeking not merely to take common action in matters of wages and hours, but also to formulate regulations for the government of the whole industry of transport (apart from that of railways), which is one more example of the tendency to create “industrial” federations on a national basis. The organisation for the purpose is the National Transport Workers’ Federation, comprising three dozen of the Unions having among their members men engaged in waterside transport work, including seamen, dockers, and carters. It was formed in November 1910 at the instance of the Dockers’ Union, and came at once into prominence during the London strike of 1911, which it handled with great vigour.[609] This was the first great fight in the Port of London since the upheaval of 1889. The National Union of Sailors and Firemen, which had in vain appealed to the Shipping Federation to unite in constituting a Conciliation Board, in June 1911 struck for a uniform scale at all ports and various minor ameliorations of their conditions. Largely as a result of the excitement caused by the seamen’s strike, the dockers in July came out for a rise from 6d. to 8d. per hour, with 1s. per hour for overtime. The stevedores, the gasworkers, the carmen, the coal-porters, the tug-enginemen, the grain porters, and various other bodies of men engaged in or about the port, put forward their own claims. Amid great excitement the whole port was stopped, great meetings on Tower Hill were held daily, and processions of strikers, said to have been as many as 100,000 in number, paraded through the City. The unrest spread to most other ports, and there were some local disturbances. The Port of London Authority, under Lord Devonport, refused all parley, and the Government for some time practically supported this great corporate employer, which had failed (and has to this day failed) to comply with the section of the Act of Parliament by which it was constituted directing it to institute a scheme for more civilised conditions of employment for its labourers. The War Office, at the request of Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then at the Home Office, accumulated troops in London, and actually threatened to put 25,000 soldiers to break the strike by doing the dockers’ work—a step which would undoubtedly have led to bloody conflict in the streets. Finally, however, the Cabinet gave way, and persuaded Lord Devonport and his colleagues, together with shipowners, wharfingers, and granary proprietors, to meet the representatives of the Unions with a view to agreement. For three whole days they sat and argued, ultimately arriving at an agreement under which the men returned to work on the immediate concession of about half their demand and the remission of the other half to arbitration. This was undertaken by Sir Albert Rollit, M.P., at the instance of the London Chamber of Commerce, his award eventually conceding to the men substantially their whole claim; summed up in 8d. per hour for the dockers, with 1s. per hour for overtime, other trades, and the men at other ports, obtaining, in one or other form, analogous advantages.[610] In May 1912 the dispute flared up again in the Thames and Medway, when a combined strike and lock-out, in which 80,000 men were involved, stopped the work of the port for six weeks. Sympathetic strikes in other ports led to some 20,000 men being idle for a few days. The men asserted that the employers had not in all cases fulfilled the agreement of the previous year, and were discriminating against Trade Unionists. The employers seem to have been concerned, in the main, to avoid recognition of the Transport Workers’ Federation, and to check its growing authority. In spite of the vigorous support of the Daily Herald; of pecuniary help, not only from Australia and the United States, but also from the German Trade Unions; and of the mediation of the Government, the strike failed owing to the men breaking away, and to the stubborn obstinacy of Lord Devonport, as Chairman of the Port of London Authority, who insisted on a resumption of work upon the employers’ assurance that they would respect all agreements and consider any grievances put forward by the representatives of any section. Notwithstanding the failure of this somewhat premature effort of the Transport Workers’ Federation, its formation, together with that of the National Federation of General Workers, have gone far to transform the position. For a couple of decades the efforts of the General Labourers’ Unions took the form of innumerable local and sectional demands, not merely for higher rates of pay, though advances of several shillings per week have continually been secured, but for mutual agreement of piecework rates, a reduction of working hours, insistence on compensation for accidents, the provision of better accommodation or greater amenity in work, and extra allowances for tasks of peculiar strain or discomfort. The efforts of the federations have raised these local and sectional arrangements to the level of national questions; and the agreements now concluded with the employers’ national representatives amount to an increasingly effective control over the industry.

The “Black-Coated Proletariat”

If Trade Unionism has, in the past thirty years, successfully progressed downward to the women and the unskilled labourers, its advance, in a sense upwards, among the various sections of the “black-coated proletariat,” has been no less remarkable. In 1892 there were only the smallest signs of Trade Union organisation among the clerks and shop assistants, the various sections of Post Office and other Government employees, the municipal officers, and the life assurance agents. Among wage-earners in these various occupations, numbering in the United Kingdom possibly several millions—badly paid, working under unsatisfactory conditions, and sometimes subject to actual tyranny—there were, thirty years ago, a few dozen small and struggling Trade Unions, with only a few tens of thousands of aggregate membership. In 1920 these have developed into powerful amalgamations in most of the several sections, nearly all fully recognised by their employers, whether private or public, with whom they enter into collective agreements; and enrolling a total membership falling not far short of three-quarters of a million.

We may note first the army of shop assistants, warehousemen, and other employees in the distributive trades, wholesale and retail.[611] The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks, established in 1891, made at first slow progress, and counted in 1912, after a couple of decades of growth, fewer than 65,000 members. Partly as a result of the National Insurance Act, which practically compelled all employees under £160 to join some organisation, the Union went ahead by leaps and bounds, multiplying its branches and swelling its numbers, until it counts now over 100,000 members. Meanwhile the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (also established in 1891)—in 1918 adding to its title also “Commercial Employees and Allied Workers”—has benefited by a similar expansion, counting, in 1920, also about 100,000 members. This society started on the basis of enrolling all employees of the Co-operative Societies, whatever their crafts, and no other persons, a constitution now disapproved of by the Trades Union Congress. It is, however, not now confined to persons employed by co-operative societies; and whilst it includes a number of carmen, tailors, bakers, bootmakers, and others in co-operative employment who should more appropriately belong to other Unions, the negotiations that have been for some time in progress for the merging of both organisations in a single great Union of persons employed in the distributive trades, and the transfer of those belonging to specific crafts to their own societies, may probably presently be successful.

Of clerks, the most effective organisation is that of the clerical service of the railway companies, the Railway Clerks’ Association, which takes in also stationmasters, inspectors, and ticket-collectors (who are all eligible also for the National Union of Railwaymen, which some of them have joined). Established in 1897, it continued for a decade insignificant in magnitude, and had not by 1910 enrolled as many as 10,000 members. After the railway strike of 1911 it began to forge ahead, passing from 30,000 in 1914 to 42,000 in 1915—a total doubled by 1920, and with increasing strength it obtained gradually increasing recognition from the railway companies, successfully maintaining its right to enrol, not only clerks in the General Managers’ offices, but also inspectors and stationmasters. As its membership grew, it was able successfully to contest the elections for representatives on the committees of the various superannuation funds instituted by the companies, and thereby to demonstrate its right to speak for the whole body of railway clerks. Whilst acting in friendly association with the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks’ Association has latterly drawn to itself an ever-increasing proportion of the inspectors and stationmasters; and in 1920, when it can count on a membership of nearly 90,000, it is claiming to speak for all grades of the Railway Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Staff. Since 1913, at least, it has been asserting a claim, as soon as the railways are nationalised, to some participation in their management; and at the end of 1919, it is understood, some promise was made by the Minister of Transport that, in any Railway Board or National Advisory Committee that may be constituted, the Railway Clerks’ Association would, with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, be accorded its due share of representation.

The great army of clerks in commercial offices has made less progress in organisation than the shop assistants and the railway clerks. For years, indeed, it seemed as if commercial clerks would not form a Trade Union; and the National Union of Clerks (established 1890) made little headway. In 1912 it had still under 9000 members. In the past seven years it has bounded up to 55,000 members.[612] There is also a small Irish Clerical Workers’ Union, principally in Dublin, resulting from a secession from the National Union. Most remarkable of all has been the formation, during the war, of a Bank Officers’ Guild and an Irish Bank Officials’ Association, having definitely Trade Union objects (though not yet seeking to join the Trades Union Congress), both of them being independent of the Bankers’ Institute, which retains the character of a scientific and educational society. There is now even a Guild of Law Court Officials, having definitely Trade Union objects.

The great body of teachers of all kinds and grades, numbering altogether about 300,000 men and women in the United Kingdom, have, during the past thirty years, become strongly and very elaborately organised in many different societies.[613] What is significant is the extent to which many of these professional associations have latterly adopted the purposes, and even the characteristic methods, of Trade Unionism. The largest of these bodies, the National Union of Teachers, established in 1890, has now over 102,000 members, and exercises great influence upon the conditions of employment of the teachers in elementary schools. During the past few years it has supported various district or county strikes for better salary-scales. The teachers in secondary schools are organised in four societies, for headmasters, headmistresses, assistant masters, and assistant mistresses respectively, united in a Federal Council of Secondary School Associations, which, though it has not yet fomented or supported a strike, has of late organised effective pressure to obtain greater security of tenure for assistants, better salary-scales, and a universal superannuation scheme.

Equally significant is the recent development of organisation among the industrial technicians, whether engineers, electricians, chemists, or merely foremen and managers; among the workers in scientific laboratories, whether for research, medical, teaching, or administrative purposes; and among the junior lecturers and assistants at University institutions. These organisations overlap in their spheres, if not also in their memberships, and are not yet stabilised, but most of them are united in the National Federation of Professional Workers of even wider scope. What is important is the growing divergence between what are essentially Trade Unions of the brain-working professionals and the purely “scientific societies” to which such persons have, until recent years, restricted their tendency to professional association. Some of the new bodies (such as the Society of Technical Engineers) have actually registered themselves as Trade Unions, a step taken also by the Medico-Political Union, a vigorous association of medical practitioners; whilst the newly formed Actors’ Association, like the National Union of Journalists, has applied for affiliation to the Trades Union Congress.

The life assurance agents—principally those employed in “industrial” insurance—number 100,000, and they have become organised in a score of societies, restricted to the staffs of particular companies. These organisations vary in their nature and in their degree of independence, from mere “welfare societies,” dominated by the management, up to aggressive Trade Unions—the strongest being the National Association of Prudential Assurance Agents. They are mostly united in two different federations. Another, and perhaps wholesomer, basis of organisation is adopted by the National Union of Life Assurance Agents, which has now some thousands of members.

But the greatest development of Trade Unionism among the “black-coated proletariat” has been among the employees of the National and Local Government. This has been entirely a growth of the past thirty years. Beginning among the manual working staff of the Postmaster-General, and among the artisans and labourers of the Government dockyards, arsenals, and other manufacturing departments, there are now a hundred and seventy separate Trade Unions of State employees, from the crews of the Customs launches and the boy clerks, up to the Admiralty Constructive Engineers and the Superintendents of Mercantile Marine Offices. Of recent years, organisation has spread to the higher grades of the Civil Service, even to the “Class I.” clerks; and practically no one below the rank of an Under-Secretary of State is held to be outside the scope of the Society of Civil Servants. All the various societies are grouped in federations, from the “Waterguard Federation” and the Prison Officers’ Federation of the United Kingdom; through the United Government Workers’ Federation and the Federal Council of Government Employees, combining the various kinds of manual working operatives; up to the Customs and Excise Federation, the Civil Service Federation, the Civil Service Alliance, and even the “National Federation of Professional Workers,” which includes also teachers. The strongest of all these bodies is probably that of the various employees of the Postmaster-General, whose fight to secure “recognition” and the opportunity for “Collective Bargaining” has extended over a couple of decades. There are about fifty separate Unions of Post Office employees, mostly small and sectional bodies; but the three principal societies (the Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, the Postmen’s Federation, and the Fawcett Association) were amalgamated in 1919 into one powerful Union of Post Office Workers, with 90,000 members with eleven salaried officers, and affiliated both to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which can now meet the managing officials of the Post Office on something like equal terms.

The employees of the Local Authorities—thirty years ago entirely without organisation—are still not so well combined as those of the National Government. A score of different societies, from such grades as school-keepers, police and prison officers and asylum attendants, up to municipal clerks, share the work with the National Union of Corporation Workers and the Municipal Employees’ Association. A large proportion of the wage-earners employed by Local Authorities are to be found in the Unions of General Workers. The National Association of Local Government Officers and Clerks is a large and powerful body, composed mainly of the clerical and supervisory grades.

Trade Unionism in the public service received a great fillip after 1906, when Mr. Herbert Samuel at the Post Office, together with some other Ministers, “recognised” the Unions of their employees, considered their corporate representations, and agreed to meet their officials. It was still further promoted when, in 1912, the Government consented to the establishment of an independent Arbitration Tribunal for determining the terms of employment in the Civil Service for all grades and sections under £500 a year. Before this tribunal, whose awards were definitively authoritative, the representatives of any association could appear as plaintiffs, those of the Treasury appearing always as defendants. Finally, after the promulgation in 1917 of the “Whitley Report,” which the Government, in impressing on other employers, found itself constrained to adopt in its own establishments, there was established during 1919 an elaborate series of joint councils (including even the civil departments of the War Office and the Admiralty) for particular branches of establishments; for whole departments, and for whole grades of the service throughout all departments, in which equal numbers of persons nominated by the employees’ associations, and of superior officers chosen by the Government, representing the management, meet periodically to discuss on equal terms questions of office organisation, professional training, conditions of service, methods of promotion, and what not. [614]

The Miners

The outstanding feature of the Trade Union world between 1890 and 1920 has been the growing predominance, in its counsels and in its collective activity, of the organised forces of the coal-miners. Right down to 1888, as we have seen, the coal-miners of England, Scotland, and Wales, though sporadically forming local associations and now and again engaging in fierce conflicts with their employers, first in this coalfield and then in that, had failed to maintain any organisation of national scope. Though their representatives participated from time to time in the general activities of the Trade Union Movement, and sat in the Trades Union Congress; though with the guidance of W. P. Roberts in the ’forties, and under the successive leadership of Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt in the ’sixties and ’seventies, they exercised intermittently a considerable influence on its Parliamentary action—the miners, for the most part, kept to themselves, framed their own policy, and fought their own battles, in which, owing to an apparently incurable “localism,” their success was not commensurate with their strength. The change came with the growing dissatisfaction with the policy of the Sliding Scale. This device for making the rate of wages vary in proportion to the selling price of coal, the adoption of which between 1874 and 1880—against the wish of Alexander Macdonald, and contrary to the advice of such friends as Professor Beesly and Lloyd Jones—we have already described, produced in the ’eighties an ever-increasing discontent. In 1881 the miners of Yorkshire merged their two Unions of South and West Yorkshire into the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, which began its successful career by terminating the local Sliding Scale agreement, and resolutely refused all future attempts to make wages depend on selling prices. The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation, a less well-organised body, presently followed its example. In 1885 a Midland Federation was formed by a number of smaller local associations for the purpose both of abolishing the Sliding Scale and of promoting the movement for an Eight Hours Day by legislative enactment. Three years later, at a conference at Manchester, the associations of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, the Midlands, and Fifeshire, with a nascent local organisation in South Wales, established the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain.[615] The aggregate membership of all these bodies was amazingly small—at the start only 36,000—but the new Federation had, from the first, a definite policy and great driving force. Outside it there remained the solid and numerically strong Durham Miners’ Association and the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association, which (together with a surviving remnant of the Amalgamated Association in South Staffordshire, and the purely nominal Sliding Scale Associations which then characterised most of the South Wales coalfield) still clung together as the National Union. It was the National Union which played the leading part in securing reforms in the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887, which firmly established the checkweigher in practically every colliery of any importance. But this was its last constructive effort. Its subsequent history is little more than the long-drawn-out resistance of the able and respected leaders of the Northumberland and Durham miners to the new ideas of Labour policy which were, as we have described, becoming dominant in the Trades Union Congress, and which were from the first adopted, if not by all the leaders, at least by the successive delegate conferences of the Miners’ Federation.

The establishment of the Federation coincided with a period of rapid expansion in the coal-mining industry. The number of persons employed rose considerably year after year, and Trade Unionism spread rapidly among them. An effective local organisation was built up in district after district, everywhere based on the autonomy in local concerns of the “lodge” or branch, consisting of the workers at a given colliery, and governed by mass meetings of the members, who elect a committee, which usually meets at least weekly. But although the National Union declined steadily in influence, it took twenty years to bring all the district associations into the Miners’ Federation, the aggregate membership of which did not reach 200,000 until 1893, and seven years later was still only 363,000. Even so, the miners were, as we described them in 1892, in some ways the most effectively organised of the industrial groups into which we divided the Trade Union world of that date. With the adhesion of Northumberland and Durham in 1908, when the National Union came finally to an end, the membership of the Federation rose to nearly 600,000, whilst the next twelve years’ growth of the industry, and the inclusion of a large proportion of the sectional unions among different grades of mine-workers,[616] have brought it in 1920 to nearly 900,000.

Meanwhile issue was joined by the mine-owners, who insisted everywhere in 1893 on considerable reductions in the wage-rates, on the plea that selling prices had fallen. The great strike that followed involved 400,000 men, and lasted from July to November. In the end the men had to submit to reductions, though they gained the important point of the practical though not explicit recognition of a minimum below which there was to be no fall. The next great achievement of the Federation was the carrying into law of the Eight Hours Bill, which, mainly owing to the opposition of the leaders of the Northumberland and Durham Miners, was not accomplished until 1908; and their influence in improving the Mines Regulation Act of 1911. Their third success, the outcome of a decade of successful organisation and intellectual leadership by Mr. Robert Smillie, who since 1912 has been annually elected to the presidency, was attained only at the cost of the greatest industrial struggle that Great Britain had yet experienced.

The national strike of miners in 1912, when practically every mine was stopped, and nearly a million miners suspended work for more than a month, arose out of the failure of the colliery companies to make adequate provision for repeated cases of individual hardship and injustice. The piecework rates of the hewers or getters of coal might be satisfactorily adjusted to the agreed day-wage standard of the district, though the arrangements for this adjustment vary from district to district, and even from mine to mine, and are very far from complete or satisfactory. But what was to happen when, from circumstances beyond his own control, the miner found himself unable to get enough coal to produce a subsistence wage? If he is assigned an “abnormal place”—where the seam is thin or crushed into small coal (for which, in South Wales, the hewer is not paid at all); or where exceptional timbering is required to prevent dangerous falls; or where there is much “stone” or water: or if, in “normal places,” the colliery management does not keep him regularly supplied with “trams” or “tubs” into which to load the coal; or with a sufficient provision of timber for props and sleepers; or of rails—no amount of skill, strength, or assiduity will prevent his earnings from falling away, it may be to next to nothing. What had long been customary was, in some coalfields, the casting of lots for “places,” and thus a periodical exchange of opportunities; and in others the granting of an allowance, or “consideration,” to hewers who complained of insufficient earnings. These allowances were granted irregularly, without the protection of Collective Bargaining, with insufficient provision for ensuring the avoidance of injustice; and it is not now denied that, in some collieries, particularly in South Wales, the owners resorted to the simple expedient of restricting the manager to a fixed maximum sum each “measuring-up day,” irrespective of the number and extent of the men’s reasonable claims. These sums, moreover, were much reduced in times of bad trade, when profits were at a minimum, especially in collieries which were actually working at a loss. The agitation for securing a prescribed minimum of daily earnings for all the piece-workers continued for a whole decade without much result, producing not a few local stoppages, especially in South Wales. These flared up, in the latter part of 1910, in the Aberdare and Rhondda valleys, into an almost continuous series of disputes. The Miners’ Federation found itself compelled in July 1911 to take the matter up as a national question; and a ballot of its whole membership decided for a national strike if the universal adoption of the principle of a prescribed daily minimum, not merely for hewers but for all grades, was not conceded. The owners quibbled and eventually refused; and after a further ballot a national strike was decided on, which the Government negotiations failed to avert, and which, after long and repeated notice, began at the end of February 1912, and rapidly extended to practically every colliery in the kingdom. As neither the employers nor the workmen would give way, the Government then announced its intention of introducing a Bill to provide for the payment, to all underground workers in the mine, not of the prescribed minimum rates which the several districts had formulated, nor yet of the overriding national minima of 5s. for a man and 2s. for a boy which were being demanded, but of district minima, to be prescribed in each coalfield by a Joint Board of employers and workmen, presided over by an impartial chairman. These provisions were bitterly opposed, not only by the coal-owners, who objected to any legal minimum, but also by the workmen’s representatives in the House of Commons, who demanded a prescribed national minimum; but they were carried into law by substantial majorities. The Federation Executive was perplexed as to the line to take, as half the membership wanted to carry on the struggle; but it was eventually decided to give the Act and the Joint Boards a chance, and the strike was declared at an end. The district minima and the rules applicable thereto had, in most cases, to be decided by the impartial chairmen; and they varied considerably from district to district, being usually a little less than the workmen had claimed. But when the working of the system was understood, and it was got smoothly into operation, it was recognised that the Miners’ Federation had achieved a very substantial victory. The miners had brought to their aid, in enforcing the payment of a periodically prescribed Minimum Day Wage to all underground workers, the strong arm of the law—not, it is true, as under the Mines Regulation Acts and the Factory and Workshop Acts, the criminal law, enforced by Government inspectors and prosecutions, but the civil law of contract, which they could themselves enforce by actions in the County Court. What the Federation extorted from the Government and the Legislature was “an extraordinary piece of hastily prepared legislation rushed through Parliament in the shadow of an unprecedented national calamity.”[617] It has been found by experience that this Act, which is nominally only temporary, does secure to the hewers a substantial minimum of day wages, however unremunerative their conditions of work; and the fixing of rates by the Joint Boards has, on the whole, considerably increased the wages of the various grades of the less skilled workers. But more important than these immediate results was the demonstration and the consolidation of the national strength of the Miners’ Federation itself; and the respect which its great power henceforth secured for it, alike in the Trade Union Movement, with the employers, and at the hands of the Government and the House of Commons.

The miners’ organisations were fully occupied for a year or two in putting into operation the Act of 1912, and in enforcing the determinations of the Joint Boards. But in 1913 the delegate conference made a new move in authorising the Executive Committee to enter into relations with other Trade Unions with a view to joint action for mutual assistance. A formal alliance had been made between the Miners’ Federation, the National Union of Railwaymen, and the Transport Workers’ Federation—commonly referred to as the Triple Alliance—when everything was suddenly changed by the breaking out of the Great War. The 1500 colliery companies and individual colliery owners, most of whom are united in the Mining Association of Great Britain, as well as in district associations, have, throughout, steadfastly refused to meet the Miners’ Federation for the negotiation of any national agreement, or the concession of national advances; although there has long been elaborate machinery for negotiation in each district.

During the four and a quarter years that the world conflict lasted (1914-18), the miners, like the rest of the British working class, patriotically subordinated their interests to those of the nation as a whole. They volunteered for military service in such numbers that they had to be forbidden to leave the mines, and numbers of them were sent back from the armies in order to maintain the output of coal. Where, as in Durham, they had agreements securing them advances of wages in proportion to the rise in the selling price, they forewent these advances; and they contented themselves everywhere with less substantial percentages of rise in rates, and with the two successive war bonuses of eighteen pence a day each—much below the rise in the cost of living—which the Government accorded to them in 1917 and 1918. With the cessation of hostilities at the end of 1918, as the cost of living continued to advance, the Miners’ Federation (which had elected for its new secretary a young South Wales miner, Mr. Frank Hodges, who had educated himself at Labour Colleges; and had also converted its presidency into a full-time salaried post, and for the first time acquired an office in London) again took up the forward movement which it had been concerting five years before; and in February 1919, after balloting its whole membership, and giving elaborate notice, it demanded from the employers a general advance of wages of 30 per cent, the reduction of the hours of labour by an average of one-fourth (the nominal Eight Hours Day to be made a nominal Six Hours Day), and—most momentous of all—the elimination of the profit-making capitalist from the industry by the Nationalisation of the Mines, for which the Trades Union Congress had been vainly asking for over twenty years. As the railwaymen and the transport workers were at the same time in negotiation for improvements in their condition, there seemed, in March 1919, every prospect of the outbreak of a general strike on a scale even greater than that of 1912, the “Triple Alliance” uniting a membership of more than a million and a half, and wielding in combination the adult male labour of something like one-sixth of the whole nation. The Government, which was still, under war powers, directing both the mines and the railways, responded by the offer of a Statutory Commission, under a Judge of the High Court, with practically unlimited powers of investigation and recommendation; at the same time giving the Federation publicly to understand that, whilst a strike would be suppressed with all the powers of the State, the recommendations of the Commission would be accepted by the Cabinet. The conference of the Miners’ Federation spent many hours in deliberation. A large section of the delegates was for an immediate strike. The men had, indeed, an extraordinarily advantageous strategic position. The nation’s stocks of coal were at a minimum, London having only three days’ supply in hand. Ultimately the advice of the leaders prevailed; and it was decided to postpone the withdrawal of labour for three weeks, and to take part in the Statutory Commission, on the express condition that this body presented an Interim Report within that time; and—most revolutionary of all—that the Federation should be allowed to nominate to the Commission, not only three of its own members to balance the three coal-owners who had been informally designated by the Mining Association of Great Britain, but also three out of the six professedly disinterested members, so as to balance the three capitalists whom the Government had already chosen as representing the principal industries dependent on the supply of coal at a moderate price. To these terms the Prime Minister acceded. The Miners’ Federation, setting a new precedent of far-reaching effect, thereupon nominated, along with its President, Vice-president, and Secretary, not three other workmen, but three economists and statisticians belonging to the Fabian Society, known to them by their lectures and writings.

The proceedings of this Commission, which sat daily in public in the King’s Robing-Room at the House of Lords, created an immense sensation. Instead of the Trade Union, it was the management of the industry that was put upon its trial. The large profits of the industry under war conditions were revealed, and especially the enormous gains of the most advantageous mines; and although the Government itself had benefited through the Excess Profits’ Duty by 50, 60, and eventually 80 per cent of these gains, it became apparent to every one that, but for this abstraction, the price of coal might have been reduced and the miners’ conditions improved to an extent never before suspected. It was seen, too, that it was the separate ownership of the mines which stood in the way of the national sharing of the advantages of the best among them. The chaotic state of the industry, with 1500 separately working joint-stock companies operating at very different costs—with no co-ordination of production, and with extremely wasteful arrangements for transport and retail distribution—was vividly presented. At the same time the unsatisfactory conditions under which the miners lived were impressively demonstrated, the scandalously bad housing of the mining community in Lanarkshire and elsewhere making a national sensation. Prompt to the appointed day the Commission presented three Reports. The three mine-owners proposed no improvement in the organisation of the industry, and offered an advance of eighteen pence a day and a reduction of hours by one per day, being only half what was demanded. The six representatives of the miners presented a long and reasoned justification of the men’s case; arguing that, with a unification of the industry in national ownership, with the adoption in all the mines of the mechanical improvements already in use in the best-managed among them, with a more carefully concerted transport system, and with a municipal organisation of retail distribution, it was practicable to concede the men’s full claim of 30 per cent advance and a two hours’ shortening of the working day without any increase in the price of coal to the consumer. The Chairman of the Commission presented a third report, intermediate in its tenour, in which he was joined by the three disinterested capitalist members, proposing an immediate advance of two shillings per day, or 20 per cent, and an immediate reduction of one hour per day, with a promise of a further reduction by an hour in 1920, if the condition of the industry warranted it. With regard to nationalisation, this Report declared that, as there had not been sufficient time to investigate the proposal, the Commission would continue its sittings, and promptly present a further report; but that it was plain, even on the evidence so far submitted, that the present system stood condemned, and that some other system must, by national purchase of the mines, be substituted for it—either State administration, or some plan by which the mines could be placed under a joint control in which the miners would share. This impressive declaration by the judicial Chairman, supported by the three capitalist members who were not mine-owners, made a great public sensation. The Cabinet immediately accepted the Chairman’s Report, pledging itself to carry it out “in the letter and in the spirit.” The Miners’ Federation hesitated, but ultimately, in consideration of the offer of an immediate further examination of nationalisation, in the light of Mr. Justice Sankey’s significant findings, decided to ballot its members, who, to the great relief of the public, by large majorities agreed to accept the Government proposal.

The Coal Industry Commission accordingly continued its sittings, now concentrating upon the issue of Nationalisation and the participation of the miners in control. The dramatic feature of the inquiry was the summoning of a succession of peers and other magnates owning mining royalties to the witness-chair, there to explain to the Commission and the public, under the sharp cross-examination of the Miners’ Federation officials, how they or their ancestors had become possessed of these property rights, how much they yielded in each case, and what social service the recipients performed for their huge incomes. Much evidence was taken for and against State administration. Within a couple of months of almost incessant daily sittings this indefatigable Commission presented its further Report, again hopelessly divided. On the question of ownership of minerals, indeed, the whole thirteen Commissioners were unanimous—a momentous decision—in recommending that the royalty owners should be at once expropriated in favour of the State. All thirteen Commissioners were unanimous, too, in recommending the admission of the workmen to some degree of participation in the management by Pit and District Committees. But there the Commissioners’ agreement ended. What was significant was that not the miners’ representatives only, but eight out of the thirteen (including the Chairman) reported in favour of expropriating all the existing colliery companies and other coal-owners. The Chairman, supported (in general terms and subject to additional suggestion) by the six miners’ representatives, proposed an elaborate scheme of Nationalisation, with administration under a Minister of Mines by joint District Councils and Pit Committees, in which the men would be largely represented. The other expropriating Commissioner preferred to vest the mines in a series of District Coal Corporations of capitalist shareholders, limited as to dividend, and working under public control, with a restricted participation of the men in the administration. Five Commissioners, including all three coal-owners, whilst agreeing to the Nationalisation of Minerals, refused to contemplate any substantial change in the working of the mines, least of all any effective sharing of the workmen in the administration; though even this capitalist minority gave lip-homage to the principle by recommending the formation of purely Advisory Pit and District Committees.

The Government, which had continued in administrative and financial control of all the collieries of the United Kingdom, whilst agreeing to adopt, in the spirit and in the letter, the terms of Mr. Justice Sankey’s first Report, took no steps to bring it into effect, and left the local mine-owners and miners’ Unions to adjust for themselves the hours and new rates of pay which it involved. Suddenly, a few weeks before the new arrangements were to come into force, the Coal Controller issued an order that no increase of rates was to exceed 10 per cent—a patent blunder, as it was the average reduction of output that Mr. Justice Sankey had estimated at 10 per cent, and it was the actual reduction in each district that had to be compensated for. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association had almost completed its arrangements with the Yorkshire mine-owners for a higher percentage of increase when the Government prohibition was received. The result was an angry strike which stopped the whole Yorkshire coalfield for several weeks, and spread to Nottinghamshire. In the end the Government had to withdraw its mistaken prohibition; and the increase of rates, in Yorkshire as elsewhere, was, as the miners had asked, made as nearly as possible proportionate to the expected local reduction in output caused by the reduction of hours. The hasty action on both sides and the misunderstandings due to imperfect knowledge, or imperfect expression, lost the nation some four million tons of coal, and cost the Yorkshire Miners’ Association about £356,000.

In October 1919 Mr. Lloyd George announced that whilst the Government would propose the nationalisation of mining royalties, and some-undefined “trustification” of the mines by districts, there would be no adoption of Mr. Justice Sankey’s Report. The Miners’ Federation refused to accept anything in the nature of capitalist “trustification,” and called in vain on the Government to fulfil its pledge to carry out the Report. In December 1919 the Federation, in conjunction with the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative Union, began a campaign of propaganda in favour of the Nationalisation of the Coal Supply, the effect of which, industrially and politically, has yet to become manifest. We have to break off the story in the middle of a critical period.

The Railwaymen

Another great industry, that of the operating staff of the railway system—scarcely mentioned in the first edition of our History—has come forcibly to the front. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century, indeed, the railway guards and signalmen, engine-drivers and firemen, shunters and porters, mechanics and labourers—though they numbered something like 5 per cent of all the male manual-working wage-earners—played hardly any part in the Trade Union Movement. Scattered in small numbers all over the country, and divided among themselves by differences of grade, conditions, and pay, they long seemed incapable of organisation as a vocation. For a whole generation after the establishment of railways no one appears to have thought Trade Unionism any more permissible among their employees than among the soldiers or the police. In 1865 an attempt to establish “The Railway Working Men’s Provident Benefit Society”—which soon became virtually a Trade Union—by Charles Bassett Vincent, a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, was ruthlessly crushed by summary dismissals. In the same year an Association of Engine-drivers and Firemen on the North-Eastern Railway actually started a strike, but perished of the attempt. Not until the end of 1871 was a lasting Trade Union established, and then only by the assistance of Michael Bass, M.P., a large railway shareholder, by whose long-continued and entirely disinterested financial and other help the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants struggled into being, with Frederick Evans as its first effective secretary. Other societies followed, of local or sectional character; but even in 1892, after twenty years of organisation, and various abortive strikes, there were fewer than 50,000 railwaymen in any sort of Trade Union, or less than one in seven of the persons employed. [618]

The objects of such railwaymen’s societies as existed were for many years confined to the protection of members from “victimisation” or other tyranny; to the provision of friendly benefits; and to spasmodic attempts to get accidents prevented or compensated for, and hours of labour reduced. Wages questions took up little of the attention of the railway Unions of these years; but strikes on particular railways—sometimes of particular grades or at particular centres only of a single railway—now and then occurred; usually in resentment of some act of tyranny, or against some specially oppressive hours of labour, and often without the prior approval of the Executive Committee. In 1890 the Amalgamated Society for the first time launched an aggressive policy, mainly as regards the hours of labour, which were indeed scandalous.[619] A prolonged strike for a shorter working day on the Scottish lines at Christmas 1890 ended in failure, and the merging of the remnant of the Scottish Society of Railway Servants in the larger Union. But it aroused public attention and led to an effective exposure by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1891-92. As a result the Board of Trade was given certain statutory powers in 1893 to remedy this tyranny—powers of which, unfortunately, little use was made. Not for nine years afterwards did the Board of Trade even call upon the railway companies for a return showing in how many cases men were kept on duty in excess of twelve hours at a stretch. Four-fifths of the railwaymen were still outside the ranks of Trade Unionism and could therefore be both oppressed by their employers and flouted by the Government Department. Their very right to combine was denied. Sir George Findlay, the General Manager of the London and North-Western Railway, voiced the common opinion of the Companies when he declared that “you might as well have a Trade Union or an ‘Amalgamated Society’ in the Army, where discipline has to be kept at a very high standard, as have it on railways.”

In December 1896, indeed, a determined attempt was made to root out Trade Unionism in Sir George Findlay’s own railway company by the dismissal of men discovered to be Trade Unionists. Through the activity of the Society these victims found influential friends, who by public and private pressure compelled their reinstatement. The excitement caused by this incident had some share in swelling the membership of the Amalgamated Society, which doubled its numbers during the year 1897; and made its first big stride in the “All Grades Movement” in that year. Previous movements had been local and sectional, and nearly always in the interests of particular grades. For the first time all the railway companies were approached simultaneously, with a request for improvements in all grades from one end of the service to the other—a reduction of the time of duty, so as to bring the working day down to ten, and for some grades eight hours; extra payments for overtime, and a uniform advance of 2s. per week for all grades except those for whom an eight hours day was sought. The Companies refused even to consider this very moderate request, and nearly a decade was to pass—a decade of slow building up of the organisation, first under Mr. Richard Bell and Mr J. E. Williams, and then under Mr. J. H. Thomas—before the Trade Unions of railwaymen were able to compel a hearing for their case. [620]

Meanwhile the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and with it the whole Trade Union Movement, suffered in the law courts a temporary set-back. An impulsive strike on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales, accompanied by extensive and successful picketing, was not countenanced by the Executive, but was eventually endorsed by its decision to take up the men’s case; and the Railway Company sued the Society for the loss occasioned by what were alleged to be the unlawful acts of its officers. To the surprise of the lawyers, as well as of the public, the judges held that—in spite of what had seemed the explicit provisions of the Trade Union Acts of 1871-76—a Trade Union could be made answerable in damages for all the acts of its officials, central or local, as if it were a corporate body, whilst still being denied the privileges of a corporate body. The strike and legal proceedings cost the Society from first to last nearly £50,000, whilst the danger to the corporate funds of all Trade Unions that the decision revealed put a damper on even the best justified strikes until, under persistent Trade Union pressure, strengthened by the entry into the House of Commons of a reinforced Labour Party, the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 restored the law to its state prior to the judicial decisions of 1902.

The railwaymen could then renew their “All Grades Movement” which the Companies in January 1907 again declined to consider, steadfastly refusing any recognition of the men’s Trade Unions, and callously denying their grievances.[621] Ballots of the membership of the Amalgamated Society and the General Union decided on a strike by 80,026 to 1857 votes, and in November 1907 a national stoppage was at hand when Mr. Lloyd George intervened as President of the Board of Trade, compelled the Companies to listen to reason, and persuaded both parties to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards, composed of equal numbers representing management and men, with an impartial chairman and authority to decide on wages and hours. These Conciliation Boards, unsatisfactory as they proved, represented a real triumph. For the first time the autocracy of the railway management was broken. There was, it is true, still no express recognition of the Trade Unions, but the men’s representatives were to be freely elected on each railway by all the employees grouped according to their grades; and these elected representatives met the management on professedly equal terms. The elections showed how thoroughly justified was the claim of the Railwaymen’s Trade Unions that they were voicing the wishes of practically the whole body of railwaymen. In spite of strenuous efforts by the management on most of the lines, and of the unfortunate jealousies among the different societies, in nearly all cases the nominees of one or other of the Unions were elected, often by large majorities. For the next few years the Amalgamated Society and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen were busy in fighting the cases of the various grades through the Conciliation Boards, and in securing thereby many small increases of wages and reductions of hours. But matters did not go smoothly. The Companies, for the most part, pursued a policy of obstruction and postponement, delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some cases deliberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than those prescribed. The “impartial” chairmen, moreover, differed among themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of the awards caused great resentment. Meanwhile the cost of living was steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind other organised workers. Progress was delayed in 1909-10 by a new set-back which the Amalgamated Society suffered in the law courts, in the prolonged litigation carried by one of its members, with capitalist assistance, right up to the House of Lords, by which the participation of any Trade Union in political activity was declared invalid—a piece of “judge-made law” to which we shall recur, and for which the Government and Parliament at first refused all redress. Suddenly, in August 1911, the pot boiled over. There was a spirit of revolt in the Labour world. In June and July the seamen and the dockers had struck, and stopped the port of London. There was an outburst of “unauthorised” railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns, and a general demand for a national strike. The Executives of the four principal railwaymen’s Unions, for once acting closely in concert, gave the Companies twenty-four hours to decide whether they would consent to meet the men’s representatives, or face a national stoppage. Once more the Government intervened, Mr. Asquith offering a Royal Commission of indefinite duration and issue, merely to propose amendments in the scheme of Conciliation Boards, and at the same time definitely informing the men—a fact which they judiciously refrained from publishing—that the Government would not hesitate to use the troops to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.[622] The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began, which, although far from universal, was sufficient to disorganise the whole railway service—as many as 200,000 men stopping work—and was rapidly bringing industry to a standstill. At the instance of Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, an overpowering display was made with the troops, which were sent to Manchester and other places, without requisition by the civil authorities, at the mere request of the Companies. In fact, a policy of repression had been decided on, and bloodshed was near at hand. In vain did the Union leaders ask Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, to take steps to obtain a meeting between the Companies’ managers and the Union representatives. Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed in the Cabinet, which peremptorily instructed the Companies to let their General Managers meet the men’s representatives face to face at the Board of Trade. For just upon twelve hours these managers, thus coerced, negotiated with four representatives of the Unions, together with Mr. Henderson and Mr. J. R. MacDonald of the Parliamentary Labour Party. At last an agreement was made—the first ever concluded between the Railway Companies as a whole and the Trade Unions of their employees—for an ending of the strike, on terms of complete reinstatement of the strikers; an immediate consideration by the Conciliation Boards of all grievances; and a prompt investigation by a bipartite Royal Commission of the dissatisfaction with these Boards, and the best way of amending the scheme.[623] When the Commission reported—it was ultimately termed a Special Committee of Inquiry—the Railwaymen’s Union once more asked the Companies to meet them for negotiation, which the Companies again refused to do. On the Unions resolving to ballot their members as to a national strike, the House of Commons set a new precedent by passing, at the instance of the Government, a resolution formally recommending a joint meeting, whereupon the Companies gave way. At the meeting that ensued a new scheme of Conciliation Boards was jointly agreed to, amending the 1907 scheme generally on the line of the Special Committee’s report, but introducing most of the other modifications that the Unions thought necessary. The machinery was made more rapid in action, and the scope of the Boards was extended. Most important of all, the men’s side of each Board was allowed to choose as secretary a person not in the employ of the Company; and it accordingly became possible for a Trade Union official to take up this work, and that not only for a single grade but, by acting for several Boards, simultaneously for all grades. This was not “recognition” in form, but at any rate the Trade Union official was let in. During the next two years, in spite of incredible obstructions, quibblings, and evasions by the Companies, a number of small improvements in the terms of service were obtained from the Boards for all the grades on practically all the lines. A result of this joint working of even greater importance was the merging, in 1913, after prolonged negotiations, of three out of the four principal societies of manual railway workers[624]—the Amalgamated, the General Union, and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen—into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under the title of the National Union of Railwaymen.