FOOTNOTES:
[599]It is doubtful whether, in any country in the world, even in Australia or Denmark, there is in 1920 so large a proportion of the adult male manual workers enrolled in Trade Unions as in the United Kingdom; and—Ireland being still relatively unorganised industrially—certainly not so large a proportion as in Great Britain alone.
The Trade Union Movement in Ireland has, apart from the Irish branches of British Unions, largely concentrated in the Belfast area, little connection with that in Great Britain, but its progress during the past thirty years has been scarcely less remarkable. The Irish railwaymen have abandoned their attempts at organisation in an Irish Union, and have lately swarmed into the National Union of Railwaymen to the number of over 20,000. The engineers in Ireland, whether at Belfast or elsewhere, are, to the number of 9000, in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other British Unions. The other great Unions have nearly all their Irish branches. But the great transformation has been in the foundation and remarkable development of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, built up by James Connolly and James Larkin, which has survived both its tremendous Dublin strike of 1913 and the loss of both its leaders, and claims in 1920 over 100,000 members in 400 branches, being half the Trade Unionists in all Ireland. The only other Irish Trade Unions exceeding 5000 members are the Flax Roughers’ Union, included with other Unions in an Irish Textile Workers’ Federation, and the Clerical Workers’ Union, together with the Irish Teachers’ Society, which (unlike the National Union of Teachers in England and the Educational Institute of Scotland) is frankly affiliated with the (Irish) Labour Party. Scores of other Irish Trade Unions exist, practically all small, local, and sectional in character, and almost confined to the ten towns of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Dundalk, Derry, Clonmel, Sligo, and Kilkenny. The total Trade Union membership in Ireland, which thirty years ago was only put at 40,000, may now exceed 200,000, about one-fifth of which is in and about Belfast. The Irish Trades Union Congress, established in 1894, and the Irish Labour Party meet annually.
The Irish Trade Union Movement, emerging from handicraftsmen’s local clubs, some of them dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, and monopolist and sectional in policy, has, during the present century, become fired with nationalist spirit and almost revolutionary fervour. Its heroes are Michael Davitt, James Connolly, and James Larkin. The story of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its extraordinary extension to all grades of wage-earners all over Ireland, and its sensational strikes in Dublin in 1913-14, is an epic in itself. Some idea of this development may be gathered from The Irish Labour Movement, by W. P. Ryan, 1919; Labour in Irish History, by James Connolly; Socialism Made Easy, by the same (about 1905); the Annual Reports of the Irish Trades Union Congress since 1895; and those of the Irish Labour Party.
[600]Statistics of aggregate membership in the past are lacking. But we suggest that after the transient mass enrolments of 1833-34 had lapsed, the total membership in Great Britain of such Trade Unions as survived probably did not reach 100,000. It is doubtful whether, as late as 1860, there were half a million Trade Unionists. We give in an Appendix such past statistics as we have found.
[601]Industrial Democracy, pp. 38, 92, 103, 123, 258, etc.
[602]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.
[603]A recent case in which the Trade Union Assistant Secretary left the weavers for the employers, in the midst of a crisis, with the Union affairs in confusion, was stigmatised as desertion.
[604]The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive introduction of women and the successive transformations of the industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892 we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In 1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters, warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers, established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering more than 100,000 (The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union, by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed” among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.
In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851; 12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members, occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35 societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).
[605]The history of the struggles in the engineering industry may be gathered from the monthly Journal of the A.S.E. and the Annual Reports of this and other engineering Trade Unions; from the references in Engineering and other employers’ periodicals. For the lock-out of 1897, see also the Times and Labour Gazette for that year, and also an anonymous volume, The Engineering Strike, 1897. See also for some of the points at issue, Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb, 1897; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917, and The Works Manager To-day, by Sidney Webb, 1918.
[606]The Unions which, along with the A.S.E., ratified the agreement were the Steam Engine Makers’ Society, the United Machine Workers’ Association, the United Kingdom Society of Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers, the Associated Brassfounders and Coppersmiths’ Society, the North of England Brass Turners’ Society, and the London United Metal Turners, Fitters and Finishers, having an aggregate membership of 70,000.
The societies which failed to secure ratification on the members’ vote, in some cases merely by the failure to obtain a sufficiently large poll, were the Amalgamated Toolmakers’ Society, the Electrical Trades Union, the United Brass Founders and Finishers’ Association, the Amalgamated Instrument Makers’ Society, the United Pattern Makers’ Association, the Associated Smiths and Strikers, the National Brassworkers and Metal Mechanics, the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, and the Scale and Beam Makers’ Society, with something like 100,000 members in the aggregate. Probably some of these will take another vote in the near future.
The old-established Friendly Society of Ironfounders (35,000 members) continues quite apart, though joining freely in engineering trade movements. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for closer union.
[607]Trade Unionism: a New Model, by R. Page Arnot, 1919; and Is Trade Unionism played out? 1919, by the same. Some “extremist” thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the “Industrial Democracy” that they desire upon a development of the Shop Stewards’ Movement, which should become, together with a “Works Committee,” the instrument of transferring the management of each undertaking from its present capitalist owners and directors to the elected representatives of the persons employed. See The Workers’ Committee, an Outline of its Principles and Structures, by J. T. Murphy (1918), and Compromise or Independence, an Examination of the Whitley Report(1918), by the same, both published by the Sheffield Workers’ Committee.
[608]The Amalgamated Society of Steel and Ironworkers and the Tin and Sheet Millmen’s Association failed to secure their members’ ratification by vote, whilst the National Association of Blastfurnacemen withheld its adhesion. These may be expected to adhere in due course.
[609]The London dock labourers found themselves in 1911, with an increased cost of living and the virtual abandonment of attempts to improve their method of employment, little better off than in 1889. See Casual Labour at the Docks, by H. A. Mess, 1916; and, for the position at other ports, Le Travail casuel dans les ports anglais, by J. Malégue, 1913; The Liverpool Docks Problem, 1912, and The First Year’s Working of the Liverpool Dock Scheme, 1914, both by R. Williams (of the Labour Exchange); and “Towards the Solution of the Casual Labour Problem,” by F. Keeling, in Economic Journal, March 1913.
[610]History of the London Transport Workers’ Strike, by Ben Tillett, 1911; The Great Strike Movement of 1911 and its Lessons, by H. W. Lee, 1911; The Times for June-August 1911; Labour Gazette, 1911-12.
[611]The Working Life of Shop Assistants, by Joseph Hallsworth and R. J. Davis, 1913.
[612]A separate Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, long small in membership, has also risen to 4500 members.
[613]See English Teachers and their Professional Organisations, by Mrs. Sidney Webb, published as supplements to The New Statesman of September 25 and October 2, 1915.
[614]From 1913 onward a persistent attempt to establish a Trade Union was made by many of the Police and Prison Officers, which was resisted by the Home Secretary, as responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and by all the Local Authorities. In 1913 the Police and Prison Officers’ Union was formed by ex-Inspector Symes, and in 1917 it was reorganised, without securing either recognition or sanction. Cases of “victimisation” having occurred, there was a sudden strike on August 29, 1918, which was participated in by nearly the whole of the police in many London divisions. This took the world (and also the criminal population) by surprise; but through good-humoured handling by the Prime Minister (who received the Executive Committee of the Union and told them that “the Union could not be recognised during the war”), the Government persuaded the men promptly to resume their duties, with a cessation of “victimisation” for joining the Union and a substantial increase of pay. When hostilities ceased, the Union expected some measure of official sanction, but none was accorded, and grievances remained unredressed. On July 31, 1919, a second strike was suddenly called, which resulted in failure, only a couple of thousand men coming out in London, and a few hundred in Liverpool, Birkenhead, and elsewhere, together with a small number of prison warders. At Liverpool and Birkenhead there was serious looting of shops and public-houses by turbulent crowds. The authorities stood firm, the Home Secretary refusing all sanction for the establishment of a Trade Union in the police force and prison staff, and summarily dismissing all the strikers, at the same time announcing large concessions in the way of wages, promotion, and pensions, and conceding, not a Trade Union, but the establishment of an elective organisation of the police force, by grades, entitled to make formal representations and complaints. This concession was embodied in the Police Act, 1919, which explicitly prohibited to the police either membership of, or affiliation to, any Trade Union or political organisation. The dismissed policemen were not reinstated, but the Government informally assisted some of them to obtain other employment.
[615]For the history of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and the contemporary District Unions, we have drawn on the voluminous printed minutes of proceedings and reports which are seldom seen outside the Miners’ Offices; the various publications of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade (now the Ministry of Labour) and the Home Office; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons (1915); The British Coal Industry, by Gilbert Stone (1919); Labour Strife in the South Wales Coalfield, 1910-11, by D. Evans (1911); The Adjustment of Wages, by Sir W. J. Ashley; Miners’ Wages and the Sliding Scale, by W. Smart (1894); Miners and the Eight Hours Movement, by M. Percy; History of the Durham Miners’ Association, by J. Wilson (1907); A Great Labour Leader[Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson (1908); Memoirs of a Miners’ Leader, by J. Wilson (1910); Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry, by George Harvey (1917); A Plan for the Democratic Control of the Mining Industry, by the Industrial Committee of the South Wales Socialist Society (1919); the Reports and evidence of the Coal Industry Commission, 1919, and the voluminous newspaper discussion to which it gave rise, together with Facts from the Coal Commission and Further Facts from the Coal Commission, both by R. Page Arnot (1919).
[616]The enginemen, boilermen and firemen, colliery mechanics, cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen and other officials, colliery clerks and various kinds of surface-workers about the mines have all their own Unions, which have greatly developed of recent years, and are in many districts not very willing to join the county miners’ associations, though they often act in conjunction with these. Their own federations are referred to on p. 550.
[617]The British Coal Trade(by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915), p. 599.
[618]The other railwaymen’s Unions are the Belfast and Dublin Locomotive Engine-drivers’ and Firemen’s Trade Union, founded in 1872, and still existing (1920) with a few hundred members; the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, founded in 1880, a powerful sectional society with 33,000 members, which long maintained a jealous rivalry with the Amalgamated; the Railway Clerks’ Association, founded in 1897, remaining very small for a whole decade, absorbing in 1911 the Railway Telegraph Clerks’ Association, founded 1897, with 85,000 members; the Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, founded in 1910, tiny and insignificant; the National Union of Railway Clerks, formed in 1913, a tiny local body, arising out of the suspension of the Sheffield Branch of the Railway Clerks’ Association, temporary only.
We may mention the Scottish Society of Railway Servants, founded in the eighteen-eighties, merged in the Amalgamated Society in 1892; the United Signalmen and Pointsmen, founded in 1880, merged in the N.U.R. in 1913; the General Railway Workers’ Union, founded in 1889, merged in the N.U.R., 1913.
For the development of Trade Unionism in the railway world, and the various controversies, we have drawn mainly on the numerous reports and other publications of the Unions themselves; the Railway Review and the Railway Clerk(the pleading for the Companies being found in the Railway News, subsequently incorporated in the Railway Gazette); Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot (1917); the Souvenir History, published by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (1910); Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney (1913); Der Arbeitskampf der englischen Eisenbahner im Jahre 1911, by C. Leubuscher, 1913; the various publications on the legal proceedings, for which see the next chapter; the Reports of the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents, hours of labour, etc., of the Select Committee of 1892, and the Special Committee of Inquiry of 1911; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole (1918); From Engine-cleaner to Privy Councillor[J. H. Thomas], by J. F. Moir Bussy (1917).
[619]Slavery on Scottish Railways(1888); The Scottish Railway Strike, by James Mavor (1891).
[620]The North Eastern Railway Company was so far an exception that, already in 1890, it was willing to receive representations from the Trade Union.
[621]A notable feature was a statistical census of the wages of the railwaymen, compiled by the Amalgamated Society through its membership, for the presentation of which Mr. Richard Bell, the Secretary, obtained the services of a Cambridge graduate, Mr. W. T. Layton. This “Green Book” revealed that 38 per cent received 20s. per week or under, and 49.8 per cent between 21s. and 30s.; with atrocious hours. Attempts to discredit these statistics were made by the Companies, it being in particular constantly suggested that nearly all the 100,000 paid under £1 per week were boys. It took the Board of Trade four years to compile and publish an official wage-census for October 1907, which eventually revealed that 96,000 adult railwaymen were receiving 19s. per week or less (Board of Trade Report, February 1912), an extraordinarily exact confirmation of the much-abused census taken by the Union. See Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney, 1913.
[622]This intimation undoubtedly meant that the Government had decided, as the Times expressly said, to use the Royal Engineers to run trains—a decision to be compared with that at once announced in the national railway strike of 1919, that no use would be made of the troops actually to run trains, nor would the Post Office officials be asked to do railwaymen’s work, nor persons on State Unemployment Benefit be called upon to accept employment on the railways. The change in attitude of the Government in eight years is significant.
[623]The committee consisted, for the first time, of equal numbers of persons appointed as being representative of employers and workmen respectively—two on each side—none of them directly concerned with the industry, with an “impartial chairman,” all five being selected by the Government. For the Companies, Sir T. Ratcliffe Ellis and Mr. C. G. Beale; for the workmen, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Mr. John Burnett; the Chairman was Sir David Harrel, K.C.B., an official of the Irish Government.
[624]The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, having now 51,000 members, unfortunately stood aloof; and the annals of railway Trade Unionism were, down to 1918, largely made up of the wrangling between this society and the National Union of Railwaymen.
[625]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.
[626]The Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Railway Clerks’ Association in 1913 had suggested that the representatives of the railway workers should constitute one-third of a National Railway Board—a proposal that did not content the larger Union.
[627]It was reported that in some cases the soldiers fraternised with the pickets and were promptly withdrawn to barracks; and the Cabinet was certainly warned, by high military authority, against attempting to use the troops.
[628]For an account of this Department see pp. 571-2.
[629]A notable feature was a revolt of the compositors and printers’ assistants, who threatened to strike and stop the newspapers altogether unless the railwaymen were allowed to present their case and unless abusive posters were abandoned.
[630]Railway Dispute, 1919: Report to the Labour Movement of Great Britain by the Committee appointed at the Caxton Hall Conference(National Transport Workers’ Federation).
[631]British Trade Unionism has often been contrasted, to its disadvantage, with the more scientifically classified German Trade Unionism before the Great War. It was, for instance, often pointed out that the three millions of German Trade Unionists were grouped in no more than 48 Unions. This, however, ignored the numerous competing Hirsch-Duncker and Christian Unions, which were far more destructive of unity than are the crowd of minor societies in Great Britain and Ireland. At present (1920) the 48 largest Trade Unions of this country concentrate a larger membership than the much-praised 48 Trade Unions of Germany did in 1914.
[632]See An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917.
[633]See the History of the British Trades Union Congress(by W. J. Davis), vol. ii. (1916), p. 156; and the successive Annual Reports of the General Federation of Trade Unions from 1900 onward.
[634]Such as those for Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire, North Wales, the South-Western Counties, and Yorkshire.
[635]At Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton, Hanley, Manchester, Worcester, and some other towns, the Trades Council has at times been allowed the use of a room in the Town Hall, or other municipal building. The Local Government Board in 1908 suggested to Local Authorities that this assistance should be generally afforded to them.
[636]One of the most active supporters of the Trades Council Movement is the National Union of Railwaymen, which has been largely responsible for the valuable help rendered by the Trades Councils in the organisation of agricultural labourers. The Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees, that of Operative Bakers of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Municipal Employees’ Association are also outstanding supporters of the Trades Councils, whilst the Oldham Operative Cotton-spinners, and the Operative Lace Makers of Nottingham make branch affiliation compulsory. In many of the principal Unions branch affiliation fees are contributed wholly, or in large proportion, from Central Funds.
[637]The Manchester Trades Council, and especially its Chairman, Mr. Purcell, of the Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association, successfully brought to a compromise the very serious strike of the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees against the Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operative Societies in 1919.
[638]The Gateshead Trades Council and Local Labour Party holds an “Information Bureau meeting” once a week, devoted to answering inquiries and affording information on Local Government affairs.
[639]The Trades Union Congress has, since 1873, published a long and detailed Annual Report; and the Parliamentary Committee has, for some years past, issued a Quarterly Circular to its constituent bodies. Besides these, there should be consulted the History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, of which two volumes have been issued (1910 and 1916); Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901.
[640]See the significant comments in History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 102-8.
[641]In the early period of its history the middle-class friends of Trade Unionism read papers and took part in debates. But for many years no one has been allowed to participate in its proceedings in any capacity except duly elected delegates who have worked at the trade they represent, or are actually salaried officials of affiliated Trade Unions. In 1892 and 1893 admission was further limited to those societies which contributed a specified amount per thousand members to the funds of the Congress. The Parliamentary Committee consists of seventeen members, elected by ballot of the whole of the delegates on the fifth day of the Congress. The successful candidates are usually the salaried officers of the great societies, the Standing Orders expressly providing that no trade shall have more than one representative except the miners, who may now have two. The Secretary receives, even in 1920, only £500 a year, and the post has nearly always been filled by an officer enjoying emoluments for other duties. For the last forty years the holder has almost constantly been a member of Parliament, with prior obligations to his constituents, which are not always consistent with the directions of his fellow Trade Unionists; and with onerous Parliamentary duties, which often hamper his secretarial work. For many years he had to provide whatever clerical assistance he required; but in 1896 a clerk, and in 1917 an Assistant Secretary, were added to the staff.
[642]Each Union casts votes in proportion to its affiliated membership, but can divide them as it pleases among the candidates. Between 1906 and 1915 the delegates were divided into ten groups of allied industries, and each group chose its own member. At the 1919 Congress a resolution was carried directing that the election should henceforth be by the transferable vote; and it remains to be seen whether this will upset the “dickering for votes.”
[643]The situation was for years further complicated by the fact that C. Fenwick, M.P., who in 1890 succeeded Henry Broadhurst in the office, was one of the Parliamentary representatives of the Durham miners, a majority of whom were not in accordance with the decision of the Congress on the crucial question of an Eight Hours’ Bill. It was in vain that Fenwick, with most engaging candour, explained to each successive Congress that his pledge to his constituents, no less than his own opinions, would compel him actively to oppose all regulation of the hours of adult male labour. The Congress nevertheless elected him for four successive years as Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee, replacing him only in 1894 by an officer who was prepared to support the policy of the Congress. This is only another example of the extraordinary constancy (referred to at p. 471) with which a working-class organisation adheres to a man who has once been elected an officer—a constancy due, as we think, partly to a generous objection to “do a man out of his job,” and partly to a deep-rooted belief that any given piece of work can be done as well by one man as another. Much the same situation has recurred frequently in the record of the Parliamentary Committee.
[644]One such case may be mentioned. In 1898 a small Trade Union of old standing (Co-operative Smiths’ Society, Gateshead) formally complained that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had allowed its members to take the places of men who had struck. The Parliamentary Committee, acting under Standing Order No. 20, appointed three of its members as arbitrators, who, after elaborate inquiry, found the charge proved, and requested the A.S.E. to withdraw its members from the place in dispute. The A.S.E. refused to accept the award, and withdrew from the Congress (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899; History of British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 161-62, 165-67).
Another case, in 1902, was adjudicated on in a similar way, where the United Kingdom Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers complained of the Associated Blacksmiths’ Society, which was found to blame (ibid. p. 208).
[645]In view of the failure of the Trades Union Congress to equip its Parliamentary Committee with any staff that would enable it to deal with these problems, the Fabian Society started in 1912 the Fabian Research Department, to investigate and supply information upon these and other questions. This organisation has now become the Labour Research Department, an independent federal combination of Trade Unions, Co-operative and Socialist societies, and other Labour bodies (including the Labour Party, the English, Scottish, and Irish Trades Union Congresses, the Co-operative Union, the Daily Herald, most of the big Trade Unions, and some hundreds of Trade Councils, Local Labour Parties, etc.), with individual students and investigators. It has its offices at 34 Eccleston Square, London, S.W.1, next door to those of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party; issues to its members a monthly bulletin of information, and has published many useful books, pamphlets, and monographs. It answers a stream of questions from Trade Unions all over the country on every conceivable point of theory or practice; it supplies particulars of rates of pay, hours of labour, and conditions of employment in other trades; and it is frequently employed in helping to prepare cases for submission to Joint Boards or Arbitration Tribunals. Its influential conduct of the “publicity” of the National Union of Railwaymen in the 1919 strike has already been described.
[646]For instance, Henry Taylor, the coadjutor of Joseph Arch in organising the agricultural labourers in 1872, was a carpenter; Tom Mann, for two years salaried President of the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers, has always been a member, and is now General Secretary, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers; whilst Edward M’Hugh, for some time General Secretary of the National Union of Dock Labourers, is a compositor; Mr. Charles Duncan, President of the Workers’ Union, is an engineer; Mr. R. Walker, General Secretary of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, was successively a shopkeeper and a railway clerk, and so on.
[647]The fervent energy of the typical official of the Labour Union of that day was well described in 1894 in the following sketch by Mrs. Bruce Glasier (Katherine Conway), a member of the “Independent Labour Party.” “He has his offices, but is generally conspicuous there from his absence. Walter Crane’s ‘Triumph of Labour’ hangs on the wall, and copies of The Fabian Essays, and the greater proportion of the tracts issued by the Manchester or Glasgow Labour Presses, lie scattered over the room. In England, Byron and Shelley, in Scotland, Byron and Burns, are the approved poets. Carlyle and a borrowed Ruskin or two are also in evidence, and a library edition of Thorold Rogers’ Work and Wages. John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy, side by side with a Student’s Marx, give proof of a laudable determination to go to the roots of the matter, and to base all arguments on close and careful study. But the call to action is never-ceasing, and train-travelling, if conducive to the enormous success of new journalism, affords but little opportunity for serious reading. ‘The daily newspapers are continually filled with lies, which one ought to know how to refute,’ and the situation all over the globe ‘may develop at any moment.’
“Yet, unlike the old Unionist leader, he is ever ready for the interviewer or the sympathetic inquirer, of whatever class or sex. Right racily he will describe the rapid growth of the movement since the great dock strike of 1889, and show the necessity in dealing with such mixed masses of men as fill the ranks of unskilled labour to-day, of continually striking while the iron is hot, and of substituting a policy of coup d’état for the deliberate preparation of the older Unions. ‘Lose here, win there,’ is our only motto, he says, resolutely determined to look at defeat from the point of view of a general-in-chief, and not from the narrower range of an officer in charge of a special division. At the moment of surrender he may have been white to the lips, but the next day will find him cheery and undaunted in another part of the country, carrying on his campaign and enrolling hundreds of recruits by the sheer energy of his confident eloquence.” (Weekly Sun, January 28, 1894.)
[648]It is, we think, only the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation that had laid down and acted on the principle of entrusting the appointment of salaried officials to the Executive Committee, on the express ground that popular election by ballot is not the right way to select administrative officers.
[649]It would clearly be an advantage if the distinction between those responsible for policy (whether designated Executive Councillors, President or otherwise) and those whose function should be executive only, were fully borne in mind. Whilst the former should certainly be elected by, and held responsible to, the membership, it is submitted that experience shows the advantage of purely executive officers—which may be what the secretaries and district delegates should become—being appointed by, and held responsible to, those who are elected.
At least, a separation should be made between persons elected to be responsible for policy, and officers employed for tasks requiring specialised training (such as the whole of the insurance work of the Union and of its Approved Society; its constantly increasing statistical requirements, and its legal business). Such officers should certainly be appointed, not elected; and should take no part in the decision of issues of policy, even as regards their own department. Speaking generally, much more specialisation of functions and officers should be aimed at in all Unions of magnitude.
[650]Such a building was decided on in 1918-19 by joint and separate conferences of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, as a “Memorial of Freedom and Peace,” in memory of those who lost their lives in the Great War. It is, however, by no means certain that the necessary large cost will be subscribed.