Note 625 — Chapter IX · (continued 2)

The mechanics and labourers in the railway companies’ engineering and repairing shops, though many of them have always been members of the various engineering and other craft Unions, long remained relatively unorganised. Many of the less skilled were enrolled by the General Railway Workers’ Union in 1889-1913; and when this was merged in the National Union of Railwaymen, with its broadened constitution, many more of the mechanics and labourers in the railway workshops were recruited, and the N.U.R. sought to obtain for them the advances and other benefits for which it was pressing. The railway companies disputed the right of the N.U.R. to speak for the “shopmen,” and the claim provoked the resentment of the craft Unions, which were now paying increased attention to the organisation of men of their crafts in the railway workshops. Repeated attempts have been made to arrive at some “line of demarcation” or other compromise, by which this rivalry between Unions could be brought to an end; but hitherto without success. The quarrel is inflamed by a conflict of Trade Union doctrine. The engineers, boilermakers, carpenters, and other trades assert that organisation should be by craft, whatever may be the industry in which the craftsman is working. The advocates of the “New Model” of the N.U.R. assert the superiority of organisation by industry, including in each industry all the crafts actually concerned. See Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917.