Note 602 — Chapter IX

The Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives is (1920) not now a member. A further development of federal complexity is the formation of a Federation of Kindred Trades connected with the Export Shipping Industry of Manchester.

An invidious feature, in which the textile industry is unique, is the appearance during the present century, as the result of a quarrel as to “political action,” of half-a-dozen separate local Trade Unions of Roman Catholic weavers, which are united in what is termed the Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies. These, which are neither numerous nor of extensive membership, remain outside the Amalgamated Association of Weavers; and are watchful critics of any proposals, at the Trades Union Congress (to which they do not seek admission) or elsewhere, that offend the Roman Catholic Church (notably any suggestion of “Secular Education,” or educational changes deemed inimical to the Roman Catholic schools). There is a National Conference of Catholic Trade Unionists having similar objects.

There was, in 1919, also a Jewish National Labour Council of Great Britain; and from time to time Unions are formed, especially in the clothing trade (such as the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors, Machinists, and Pressers, established 1893), and in baking and cabinetmaking, aiming at enrolling Jewish workers. But this is not really a religious, or even primarily a racial, cleavage, but merely sectional organisation, usually transient, among particular branches of industry which happen to be principally carried on by Jews. At present most such societies in the clothing trade have been absorbed in the United Garment Workers’ Trade Union, which, with upwards of 100,000 members, is actively negotiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses (established 1865) and the effective Scottish Operative Tailors’ and Tailoresses’ Association, with 5000 members, under the title of the United Tailors and Garment Workers.