The History of Trade Unionism / (Revised edition, extended to 1920)

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

FOOTNOTES:

[511]See the History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, of which two volumes have been issued by the Parliamentary Committee (1910 and 1916). William John Davis, one of the most successful Trade Union administrators, was born in 1848, at Birmingham. In 1872, when the National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers was established in a trade hitherto entirely unorganised, he became General Secretary, a post which, except for one short interval, he has ever since retained. Within six months he obtained from the employers the 15 per cent increase which they had refused to the unorganised men, and established branches throughout the kingdom; and presently he completed the difficult and laborious task of constructing a list of prices for all brasswork, for which he obtained the employers’ recognition. He was elected to the Birmingham School Board in 1876, and to the Town Council in 1880. In 1883 he accepted appointment as Factory Inspector, but six years later returned to his former post at the urgent request of the workmen, whose Union had in his absence sunk almost to nothing, a condition from which he was able quickly to restore it to far more than its highest previous strength; and to take on, in addition, the secretaryship of the Amalgamated Metal Wire and Tube Makers’ Society. He was made a J.P. in 1906. Since 1881 he has been elected twenty-six times to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. He is the author, in addition to the History of the British Trades Union Congress, of The Token Coinage of Warwickshire and Nineteenth-Century Token Coinage(The Life Story of W. J. Davis, by W. B. Dalley, 1914).

[512]In 1878, for instance, the Parliamentary Committee resolved that Congress ought not to interfere either between the English and Scottish Tailors’ Societies or between the Boilermakers and the Platers’ Helpers.

[513]The Congress, from 1871, annually elected a Parliamentary Committee of ten members and a secretary. The members of the Committee were always chosen from the officials of the more important Unions, with a strong tendency to re-elect the same men year after year. Between 1875 and 1889 the composition of the Committee was, in fact, scarcely changed, except through death or the promotion of members to Government appointments. George Potter was secretary from 1869-71; George Odger in that year; and George Howell, afterwards M.P., from 1872-75. Henry Broadhurst was for fourteen years annually re-elected secretary without a contest, temporarily ceding the post, whilst Under Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1886, to George Shipton. He was succeeded by Charles Fenwick, M.P., from 1890-93; then followed S. Woods, M.P., from 1894-1904; W. C. Steadman, M.P., from 1905-10; and the Right Honourable C. W. Bowerman, M.P., from 1911 onwards.

[514]Odger died in 1877, Guile in 1883, and Coulson (who had retired many years before) in 1893.

[515]To the counsels of Frederic Harrison, E. S. Beesly, H. Crompton, and A. J. Mundella was, from 1873, frequently added that of Mr. (afterwards Justice) R. S. Wright, who rendered invaluable service as a draughtsman. Henry Crompton supplied us with the following account of the subsequent separation between the Positivists and the Trade Union leaders:

“In the year 1881 the connection of the Parliamentary Committee with the Positivists was modified. There was not the same occasion for their services as there had been. After 1883, in which year Mr. F. Harrison and Mr. H. Crompton attended the Congress by invitation, the connection ceased altogether, though there was no breach of friendly relations. Till 1881 there had been entire agreement between them both as to policy and means of action. The policy of the Positivists had been to secure complete legal independence for workmen and their legitimate combinations; to make them more respected and more conscious of their own work; to lift them to a higher moral level; that they should become citizens ready and desirous to perform all the duties of citizenship. The means employed was to consolidate and organise the power of the Trades Societies, through the institutions of the annual Congress and its Parliamentary Committee; to use this power, as occasion served, for the general welfare as well as for trade interests. That the measures adopted or proposed by the Congress should be thoroughly discussed in the branches, and delegates well posted in the principal questions. To express it shortly—organisation of collective labour and political education of individual workmen.

“The condition of this effective force was that, while it was being used in furtherance of political action, it should be kept quite clear and independent of political parties. The divergence came with the advent of the Gladstonians to office. The Liberal Government began a policy of coercion in Ireland. Combination was to be put down by the very same mechanism which had been invented to repress labour combinations—by the law of conspiracy. The very ruling of Baron Bramwell as to the Tailors’ strike was employed to concoct a law to convict Mr. Parnell and his coadjutors. As a result law was laid down by the Irish judges as to political combinations, which is binding in England, and has still to be resisted or abolished. The Positivists endeavoured to the utmost of their ability to rouse the working classes to a sense of the danger of these proceedings, and to offer an uncompromising resistance to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The Parliamentary Committee would have none of it. They no doubt believed that the interests of their clients would be best served by a narrower policy, by seeking the help and favour of the eminent statesmen in office. Instead of a compact, powerful force, holding the balance between the parties and the key of the situation, dictating its terms, they preferred to be the tag end of a party. In the end they did not get much, but the Congress was successfully captured and muzzled by the Gladstonian Government.”

[516]Report of Trades Union Congress, Dublin, 1880, p. 15.

[517]The working of the Trade Union Act of 1871 revealed some technical defects in the law, which were remedied by an amending Act in 1876 (39 and 40 Vic. c. 22). Rules for the execution of the Employers and Workmen Act were framed by the Lord Chancellor in the same year.

[518]This defence of “common employment,” which practically deprived the workman in large undertakings of any remedy in case of accidents arising through negligence in the works, was first recognised in the case of Priestly v. Fowler in 1837 (3 Meeson and Welby). Not until 1868 did the House of Lords, as the final Court of Appeal, extend it to Scotland. The growth of colossal industrial undertakings, in which thousands of workmen were, technically, “in common employment,” made the occasional harshness of the law still more invidious.

[519]Act 43 and 44 Vic. c. 52 (1880).

[520]The annual Parliamentary returns for the next fifteen years showed that between three and four hundred cases came into court every year, the amount of compensation actually awarded reaching between £7000 and £8000. But a large number of cases were compromised, or settled without litigation. Meanwhile the relative number of accidents diminished. Whereas in 1877 one railway employee in 95 was more or less injured, in 1889 the proportion was only one in 195. Whereas between 1873 and 1880 one coal-miner in 446 met his death annually, between 1881 and 1890 the proportion was only one in 519; although there was apparently less improvement, if any, as regards non-fatal accidents in the mine.

[521]By “contracting out” was meant an arrangement between employer and employed by which the latter relinquish the rights conferred upon them by the Act, and often also their rights under the Common Law. The Act was silent on the subject; but the judges decided, to the great surprise and dismay of the Trade Union leaders, that contracting out was permissible (see Griffiths v. Earl of Dudley, 9, Queen’s Bench Division, 35). The usual form of “contracting out” was the establishment of a workman’s insurance fund to which the workmen were compelled to subscribe, and to which the employer also contributed. Among the coal-miners, those of Lancashire, Somerset, and some collieries in Wales generally contracted out. The employees of the London and North-Western, and London and Brighton Railway Companies also contracted out. In one or two large undertakings in other industries a similar course was followed. But in the vast majority of cases employers did not resort to this expedient. Particulars are given in the Report and Evidence of the Select Committee on Employers’ Liability, 1866; the publications of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1891-94; and Miners’ Thrift and Employers’ Liability, by G. L. Campbell (Wigan, 1891); and our Industrial Democracy.

In 1893-94 a further amending Bill passed the House of Commons which swept away the doctrine of common employment, and placed the workman with regard to compensation on the same footing as any other person. A clause making void any agreement by which the workman forewent his right of action, or “contracted out,” was rejected by the House of Lords, and the Bill was thereupon abandoned. The question was settled in 1896 by the passage, under the Unionist Government, of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, giving compensation in all cases, irrespective of the employers’ default.

[522]The legal advisers of the Junta realised that the triumph of 1875, though it resulted in a distinct strengthening of the Trade Union position, was mainly a moral victory. Though Trade Unions were made legal, the law of conspiracy was only partially reformed, whilst that relating to political combinations, unlawful assemblies, sedition, etc., remained, as it still remains, untouched. Expert lawyers knew in how many ways prejudiced tribunals might at any time make the law oppressive. The legal friends of Trade Unionism desired, therefore, to utilise the period of political quiet in simplifying the criminal law, and in removing as much of the obsolete matter as was possible. And though State Trials recommenced in Ireland in 1881, and criminal prosecutions of Trade Unionists continued in England down to 1891, the interval had been well spent in clearing away some of the grosser evils.

[523]In the proposed reform of the Jury laws, for instance, the Parliamentary Committee for several years did not venture to ask explicitly for that payment of jurymen which alone would enable working men to serve, and contented themselves with suggesting a lowering of the qualification for juryman. In 1876, indeed, John Burnett, then a prominent member of the Committee, strongly opposed the Payment of Jurymen on the ground that it might create a class of professional jurors (Trades Union Congress Report, 1876, p. 14).

[524]See, for instance, the report of the 1876 Congress, p. 30; that of the 1882 Congress, p. 37; that of the 1883 Congress, p. 41; and History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.

[525]In this connection may be mentioned the extensive agitation promoted by Samuel Plimsoll for further legislation to prevent the loss of life at sea. At the 1873 Trades Union Congress Plimsoll distributed copies of his book, Our Merchant Seamen, and enlisted, during the next three years, practically the whole political force of the Trade Union Movement in support of his Merchant Shipping Acts Amendment Bill. The “Plimsoll and Seamen’s Fund Committee,” of which George Howell became secretary, received large financial help from the Unions, the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association voting, in 1873, a levy of a shilling per member, and contributing over £1000. The Parliamentary Committee gave Plimsoll’s Bill a place in their programme for the General Election of 1874, and this Trade Union support contributed largely to Plimsoll’s success in passing a temporary Act in 1875, and permanent legislation in 1876, against the combined efforts of a strong Conservative Government and the shipowners on both sides of the House. (See Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902.)

[526]Congress Reports, 1882 and 1883.

[527]Parliamentary Committee’s Report, September 17, 1877.

[528]That extending to factory scales and measures the provisions of the Weights and Measures Act relating to inspection, etc.

[529]The appointment was first offered to Broadhurst, who elected to continue his work as Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee, and who suggested Prior (Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901).

[530]Ibid. p. 136.

[531]It may be mentioned that the Trades Union Congress, which at first had welcomed addresses from the middle and upper class friends of Trade Unionism, was, between 1881 and 1883, gradually restricted to Trade Unionists. At the Nottingham Congress in 1883, where Frederic Harrison read a paper on the “History of Trade Unionism,” and Henry Crompton one on the “Codification of the Law,” when Frederic Harrison proposed to take part in the discussion on the Land Question, he was not permitted to do so; and this rule has since been rigidly adhered to. At the Aberdeen Congress of 1884 Lord Rosebery was allowed to deliver an address on the “Federalism of the Trades Union Congress,” but this was the last time that any one has been invited to read a paper.

[532]Times leader on the Congress of Belfast, September 11, 1893, which deplores the remarkable “subservience to Mr. John Burns and his friends” manifested by the Congress—a subservience marked by the election of Mr. Burns for the Parliamentary Committee at the head of the poll, and by the adoption of a programme which included the nationalisation of the land and other means of production and distribution.

[533]The following description of the rise of the “New Unionism” of 1889 is based on minutes and reports of Trade Union organisations, the files of Justice, the Labour Elector, the Trade Unionist, the Cotton Factory Times, the Workman’s Times, and other working-class journals. The documentary evidence has been elucidated and supplemented by the reminiscences of most of the principal actors in the movement, and by the personal recollections of the authors themselves, one of whom, as a member of the Fabian Society, observed the transformation from the Socialist side, whilst the other, as a disciple of Herbert Spencer and a colleague of Charles Booth, was investigating the contemporary changes from an Individualist standpoint.

[534]See Mr. H. M. Hyndman’s England for All, 1881.

[535]Report of the International Trades Union Congress at Paris, 1886, by Adolphe Smith, 1886.

[536]Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, November 1884.

[537]Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, 1885.

[538]The results of twenty years of patient labour by Charles Booth and his assistants are embodied in the magnificent work, Labour and Life of the People(London, 1st edition, 2 vols., 1889-91; 2nd edition, 4 vols., 1893), reissued in greatly enlarged form as Life and Labour in London, 18 vols.; Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age(London, 1893); The Aged Poor (1894); Old Age and the Aged Poor(1899); Industrial Unrest and Trades Union Policy(1913). In Charles Booth: a Memoir(1918) Mrs. Booth has given a personal biography (1840-1914) of a tireless investigator who, merely by the instrument of social diagnosis, got accomplished reforms of a magnitude that seemed at first wholly impracticable.

[539]The funds of the Stonemasons had been completely exhausted by the great strike of 1878. In January 1879 the Society determined, on a proposition submitted by the Central Executive, to close all pending disputes (including a general strike at Sheffield against a heavy reduction without due notice); and between that date and March 1885, though many of the branches struggled manfully, and in some cases successfully, against repeated reductions of wages, increases of hours, or infringements of the local bye-laws, no strike whatever was supported from the Society’s funds. The case of the Stonemasons is typical of the other great trade friendly societies.

[540]What a Compulsory Eight Hours Working Day means to the Workers, by Tom Mann (1886), 16 pp.

[541]Mr. Tom Mann, one of the outstanding figures in the New Unionist Movement, was born at Foleshill, Warwickshire, in 1856, and apprenticed in an engineering shop at Birmingham, whence he came to London in 1878, and joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Eagerly pursuing his self-education, he became acquainted first with the Co-operative Movement, and then with the writings of Henry George. In 1884 he visited the United States, where he worked for six months. On his return he joined the Battersea Branch of the Social Democratic Federation, and quickly became one of its leading speakers. His experience of the evils of overtime made the Eight Hours Day a prominent feature in his lectures, and in 1886 he published his views in the pamphlet, What a Compulsory Eight Hours Working Day means to the Workers(1886, 16 pp.), of which several editions have been printed. In the same year he left his trade in order to devote himself to the provincial propaganda of the Social Democratic Federation, spending over two years incessantly lecturing, first about Tyneside, and then in Lancashire. Returning to London early in 1889, he assisted in establishing the Gas-workers’ Union and in organising the great dock strike, on the termination of which he was elected President of the Dockers’ Union. For three years he applied himself to building up this organisation, deciding to resign in 1892, when he became a candidate for the General Secretaryship of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. After an exciting contest, during which he addressed meetings of the members in all the great engineering centres, he failed of success only by 951 votes on a poll of 35,992. In the meantime he had been appointed, in 1891, a member of the Royal Commission on Labour, to which he submitted a striking scheme for consolidating the whole dock business of the port of London, by cutting a new channel for the Thames across the Isle of Dogs. On the establishment in 1893 of the London Reform Union he was appointed its secretary, a post which he relinquished in 1894 on being elected secretary of the Independent Labour Party. This he presently relinquished to emigrate to New Zealand; and there and in Australia he threw himself energetically into Trade Union agitation. Returning to England in 1911, he became a fervent advocate of Syndicalism; and then became an organiser for various General Labour Unions. In 1919 he was elected General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, after an exhaustive ballot of its great membership.

[542]Article in Justice, September 3, 1887.

[543]Mr. John Burns, in many respects the most striking personality in the Labour Movement, was born at Battersea in 1859, and was apprenticed to a local engineering firm. Already during his apprenticeship he made his voice heard in public, in 1877 being actually arrested for persistently speaking on Clapham Common, and in 1878 braving the “Jingo” mob at a Hyde Park demonstration. As soon as he was out of his time (1879) he joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and became an advocate of shorter hours of labour. An engagement as engineer on the Niger, West Africa, during 1880-81, gave him leisure to read, which he utilised by mastering Adam Smith and J. S. Mill. Returning to London, he worked side by side with Victor Delahaye, an ex-Communard, who was afterwards one of the French representatives at the Berlin Labour Conference, 1891, and with whom he had many talks on the advancement of labour. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and at once became its leading working-class member, championing its cause, for instance, in an impressive speech at the Industrial Remuneration Conference in 1885. In the same year he was elected by his district of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as its representative at the quinquennial delegate meeting of the Society, where he found himself the youngest member. At the General Election of 1885 he stood as Socialist candidate for West Nottingham, receiving 598 votes. For the next two years he became known as the leader of the London “unemployed” agitation. His prosecution for sedition in 1886 (with three other prominent members of the Social Democratic Federation) aroused considerable interest, and on his acquittal his speech for the defence, The Man with the Red Flag, had a large sale in pamphlet form (1886; 16 pp.). At the prohibited demonstration at Trafalgar Square on “Bloody Sunday” (November 13, 1887), in conjunction with Mr. Cunninghame Graham, M.P., he broke through the police line, for which they were both sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. In January 1889 he was elected for Battersea to the new London County Council, on which he became one of the most useful and influential members. His magnificent work in the dock strike and in organising the unskilled labourers is described in the text. At the General Election of 1892 he was chosen, by a large majority, M.P. for Battersea, and at the Trades Union Congress in 1893 he received the largest number of votes for the Parliamentary Committee, of which he accordingly became Chairman. In 1906 he was appointed President of the Local Government Board in Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s Government, with a seat in the Cabinet—thus becoming the first working-man Cabinet Minister—a post which he held until August 1914, when he resigned on the outbreak of war. He retained his seat in Parliament until 1918, when he retired.

[544]Address to Trade Unionists in Justice, January 24, 1885.

[545]Weiler was the delegate of the Alliance Cabinetmakers’ Society, and came from London. The Congress Report gives the following account of his paper: “After reviewing the position of the working classes under the present system, and comparing it with the state of things eighty years ago, he contended that the best means of bettering their position was to reduce the hours of toil. The result of this would be, first, to give every worker a better chance of employment, and thus lessen that sort of competition which was caused by hunger and want; secondly, it would give them time and opportunity for rest and amusement, and that cultivation of their minds which would enable them to prepare themselves for the time when the present system of production would collapse, and the time of this collapse was not so distant as some supposed.” The paper was received with much applause, and Weiler received the thanks of Congress. No resolution was passed.

[546]History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i. p. 133.

[547]The Return moved for by George Howell regarding the Woolwich and Enfield engineering works showed that, during 1884 and 1885, more than half the artisans worked overtime, the average per week for each man varying from 9.4 hours in some shops to 17.8 in others.

[548]11,966 of its members voted for an Eight Hours Day, and of these 9209 declared in favour of the enforcement of the eight hours limit by law. The total votes given for an Eight Hours Law was 17,267; against it, 3819.

[549]The votes in favour of an Eight Hours Day were 39,656; against it, 67,390, of which 56,541 were cast on behalf of the Cotton-spinners and Weavers. In favour of an Eight Hours Law, 28,511; against it, 12,283. The votes of the different trades, and a summary of the Congress proceedings on this subject, are given in The Eight Hours Day, by Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, 1891; see also History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii. pp. 7-8.

[550]The clause was moved by S. Williamson, Liberal Member for Kilmarnock, and seconded by J. H. C. Hozier, Conservative Member for South Lanarkshire. It received no support from the “Labour Members,” and was rejected by 159 to 104. See the Eight Hours Day, by Webb and Cox, 1891, p. 23.

[551]The “National Conferences” of the miners are a feature peculiar to the industry. Besides the periodical gatherings of the separate federations, the miners, since 1863, have had frequent conferences of delegates from all the organised districts in the kingdom. These conferences were, until 1889, held under the auspices of the National Union; subsequently they were summoned by the Miners’ Federation. The meetings, from which reporters are now excluded, are consultative only, and their decisions are not authoritative until adopted by the separate organisations. See Die Ordnung des Arbeitsverhältnisses in den Kohlengruben von Northumberland und Durham, by Dr. Emil Auerbach (Leipzig, 1890, 268 pp.).

[552]The “Fair Trade” attack had arisen in the following manner. At the Bristol Congress in 1878, certain delegates, who were strongly suspected of being the paid agents of the organisation then agitating for the abolition of the foreign bounties on sugar, attempted to force this question upon the Congress, and made a serious disturbance. These delegates afterwards became the paid representatives of the “Fair Trade League,” an association avowedly composed of landlords and capitalists with the object of securing a reimposition of import duties. The Front Bench steadfastly refused to allow the Congress to be used for promotion of this object, and were exposed in return to what the Congress in 1882 declared to be “a cowardly, false, and slanderous attack, ... an attempt at moral assassination.” Instead of fighting the question of Free Trade versus Protection, the emissaries of the Fair Trade League developed an elaborate system of personal defamation, directed against Broadhurst, Howell, Shipton, and other leaders. For instance, Broadhurst’s administration of the Gas Stokers’ Relief Fund in 1872 was made the pretext for vague insinuations of malversation which were scattered broadcast through the Trade Union world. At the Congress of 1881 the “Fair Trade” delegates were expelled, on it being proved that their expenses were not paid by the Trade Union organisations which they nominally represented. A renewed attack on the Congress of 1882 ended in the triumphant victory of the Parliamentary Committee, the complete exoneration of Broadhurst and his colleagues, and the final discomfiture of the “Fair Trade” delegates. See Henry Broadhurst: the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901; History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.

[553]Report to Congress of 1884. This is another instance of the abandonment of the more generous views of Applegarth and Odger.

[554]Mr. Drummond, who resigned his secretaryship in 1892, was in the following year appointed to the staff of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, from which he retired in 1918.

[555]See its Circular of June 1886.

[556]Some isolated protests against the employment of non-Unionists are of earlier date. Thus, the minutes of the Birmingham Trades Council show that, on July 3, 1880, at the instance of a painters’ delegate, it passed a resolution protesting against the employment of “non-Union and incompetent men” by the local hospital. And in the same month the Wolverhampton Trades Council had successfully protested against the employment of non-Unionist printers upon a new Liberal newspaper about to be established.

[557]The chief medium for the attack was the Labour Elector, a penny weekly journal published, from September 1888 to April 1890, by Mr. H. H. Champion, an ex-officer of the Royal Artillery, who (prosecuted in 1886, as we have seen, with H. M. Hyndman, J. Burns, and Williams, for sedition) had at one time been a leading member of the Social Democratic Federation, from which he was excluded on a difference of policy. He afterwards emigrated to Melbourne, where he still (1920) resides.

[558]Henry Broadhurst: the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901, pp. 218-24; History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.

[559]The men employed by two of the gas companies in London, and most of those engaged by provincial municipalities, have retained this boon. But in December 1889 the South Metropolitan Gas Company insisted, after a serious strike, on a return to the twelve hours’ shift. A scheme of profit-sharing was used to break up their men’s Union and induce them to accept individual engagements inconsistent with Collective Bargaining. This example (which is not unique) confirmed the Trade Unions in their objection to schemes of “Profit-sharing” or “Co-partnership.”

[560]This strike had the good fortune to find contemporary historians who were themselves concerned in all the phases of the struggle. The Story of the Dockers’ Strike, by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Hubert Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan Nash (1890, 190 pp.), gives not only a detailed chronicle of the highly dramatic proceedings, but also a useful description of the organisation of the London Docks.

[561]This movement was much assisted by the “Red Van” campaigns of the English Land Restoration League, 1891-94, which coupled Land Nationalisation propaganda with the formation of local unions of the labourers in the Southern and Midland Counties of England. In the agricultural depression of 1894-95, when staffs were further reduced and wages again lowered, nearly all these new Unions sank to next to nothing, or entirely dissolved. Most information as to them is to be gained from The Church Reformer for 1891-95; History of the English Agricultural Labourer, by W. Hasbach, 1907; and Ernest Selley’s Village Trade Unions of Two Centuries, 1919.

[562]Short-lived and turbulent combinations among seamen have existed at various periods for the past hundred years, notably between 1810 and 1825, on the north-east coast, where many sailors’ benefit clubs were also established. In 1851, again, a widespread national organisation of seamen is said to have existed, having twenty-five branches between Peterhead and London, and numbering 30,000 members. This appears to have been a loose federation of practically autonomous port Unions, which for some years kept up a vigorous agitation against obnoxious clauses in the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1851-54, and fought the sailors’ grievances in the law courts. In 1879 the existing North of England Sailors and Sea-going Firemen’s Friendly Association was established, but failed to maintain itself outside Sunderland. In 1887 its most vigorous member, J. Havelock Wilson, convinced that nothing but a national organisation would be effective, started the National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union, which his able and pertinacious “lobbying” made, for some years, an effective Parliamentary force.

[563]Address to members in First Half-Yearly Report (London, 1889). The spirit of the uprising is well given in The New Trade Unionism, by Tom Mann and Ben Tillett, 1890; on which George Shipton was moved to write A Reply to Messrs. Tom Mann and Ben Tillett’s Pamphlet entitled “The New Trade Unionism,” 1890.

[564]Speech delivered by John Burns on the Liverpool Congress, September 21, 1890(1890, 32 pp.).

[565]Justice, November 7, 1885.

[566]Printed in Justice, September 6, 1884.

[567]“The Decay of Trade Unions,” by H. M. Hyndman, Justice, June 18, 1887.

[568]“The Trade Union Congress,” by John Burns, Justice, September 12, 1885.

[569]Justice, July 11, 1885.

[570]Justice, July 18, 1885. The identity of purpose and methods between the two movements is indeed elsewhere directly asserted; see “Socialism in ’34,” ibid., April 19, 1884, and the extracts from the Owenite journals in the issue for July 25, 1885.

[571]Ibid., August 6, 1887.

[572]Justice, July 25, 1885.

[573]From 1889 onwards the columns of Justice abound in abuse and denunciation of the leaders of the New Unionism. We may cite, not so much because it summarises this denunciation and abuse, but because of the details of the movement that it incidentally gives, The Rise and Progress of a Right Honourable, by Joseph Burgess (1911).

[574]In this development some share is to be attributed to the work of the Fabian Society, which, established in 1883, began in 1887 to exercise a growing influence on working-class opinion. The publication, in 1889, of Fabian Essays in Socialism, the circulation between 1887 and 1893 of three-quarters of a million copies of its series of “Fabian tracts,” and the delivery of several thousand lectures a year in London and other industrial centres, contributed largely to substitute a practical and constitutional policy of Collectivist reform for the earlier revolutionary propaganda. Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and other Trade Union leaders were, from 1889 onwards, among the members of the parent Fabian Society, whilst the ninety independent local Fabian Societies in the provincial centres usually included many of the delegates to the local Trades Councils. Some account of the Society and its work will be found in Zum socialen Frieden, by Dr. von Schulze Gaevernitz (Leipzig, 1891, 2 vols.); in Englische Socialreformer, by Dr. M. Grunwald (Leipzig, 1897); in La Société Fabienne, by Edouard Pfeiffer (Paris, 1911); in Geschichte des Socialismus in England, by M. Beer (Stuttgart, 1913), republished in different English form as History of British Socialism(vol. i., 1918; vol. ii., 1920); in Socialism, a Critical Analysis, by O. D. Skelton, 1911; and in Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present Day, by Ernest Barker, 1915. A superficial survey of the development of opinion is given in Socialism in England, by Sidney Webb (1st edition, 1889; 2nd edition, 1893). See History of the Fabian Society, by Edward R. Pease (1915).

[575]Trade Unionism Old and New, 1891, passim.

[576]Thus the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers’ Union soon gave Funeral Benefit—usually the first to be added; whilst many of the branches started their own sick funds. Some of the branches of the National Union of Gas-workers and General Labourers promptly added local benefit funds, and the addition of Accident Benefit by the whole society was presently adopted.