Note 150 — Chapter II

John Gast, a shipwright of Deptford, was evidently one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time. We first hear of him in 1802, when there was a serious strike in London that attracted the attention of the Government (Home Office Papers in Record Office, 65—1, July and August 1802), as the author of a striking pamphlet entitled A Vindication of the Conduct of the Shipwrights during the late disputes with their Employers(1802, 38 pp.). In 1818 he is found advocating the first recorded proposal for a general workmen’s organisation, as distinguished from separate trade clubs—to be described in our next chapter; and his Articles of the Philanthropic Hercules for the Mutual Support of the Labouring Mechanics, which were printed in the Gorgon, attracted the attention of Francis Place, who described him (Place MSS, 27819—23) as having “long been secretary to the Shipwrights’ Club: he was a steady, respectable man. He had formed several associations of working men, but had been unable to keep up any one of them.” He became one of Place’s most useful allies in the agitation for a repeal of the Combination Laws, and when, in 1825, their re-enactment was threatened, his “committee of trades delegates” was Place’s strongest support. Gast was the leading spirit in the establishment of the Trades Newspaper in July 1825, and became chairman of the committee of management, as well as a frequent contributor. In the same year he was actively engaged in the shipwrights’ struggle for a “Book of Rates,” or definite list of piecework prices, and the energy with which he counteracted the design of the Board of Admiralty, of allowing the London shipbuilders to borrow men from the Portsmouth Navy Yard, contributed mainly to the success of the fight.