FOOTNOTES:
[707]See his Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 1871-72; his more generalised survey, Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss den heutigen Recht(Leipsic, 1877), translated as The Relation of Labour to the Law of To-day(New York, 1890); and his article on “The Growth of a Trades Union,” in the North British Review, October 1870.
[708]Sec. 24 of the Factory Act of 1891 provides, as regards textile manufactures, that the employer shall supply every worker by the piece with certain particulars as to the quantity of work and rate of remuneration for it.
[709]History of Trade Unionism, by S. and B. Webb, 1st ed., 1894, pp. 476-78.
[710]The most important sources of information are the Annual Reports of the Trades Union Congress, 1874-1919, and other publications of its Parliamentary Committee; those of the Annual Conferences of the Labour Representation Committee, 1901-5, and of the Labour Party, 1906-19, together with the Party’s other publications, especially Labour and the New Social Order, 1918; the reports and contemporary publications of the Socialist Societies, especially the Independent Labour Party from 1893, and the Fabian Society from 1884; Labour Year Book for 1916 and 1919; History of British Socialism, by M. Beer, vol. ii., 1920; History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, 2 vols., 1910, 1916; Die englische Arbeiterpartei, by G. Guettler, 1914; Aims of Labour, by Rt. Hon. A. Henderson, 1918; History of the Fabian Society, by E. R. Pease, 1916; History of Labour Representation, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912; biographies of Joseph Arch, Henry Broadhurst, Robert Applegarth, Thomas Burt, John Wilson, J. H. Thomas, W. J. Davis, etc.
[711]The movement for “Labour Representation” (which “at that time meant working-men members of Parliament and nothing else,” History of Labour Representation, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912) was first got under way by George Potter’s London Working Men’s Association in 1866, mentioned at the end of Chapter VI. At the second Trades Union Congress, at Birmingham in 1869, a paper had been read on “Direct Labour Representation in Parliament,” but Congress took no action. A separate “Labour Representation League” was then formed under the presidency of R. M. Lathom, a Chancery barrister, to which many leading Trade Unionists belonged, of which Henry Broadhurst was secretary from 1872 to about 1878, and which sought from the Liberal Party opportunities for the return of a few working-class members; but (as formerly in the cases of William Newton’s contest for the Tower Hamlets in 1852 and George Odger’s at Southwark in 1870) in vain. At the General Election of 1874, as we have already described, fourteen workmen went to the poll; but in ten of the constituencies they were fought by both parties, and only in the other four did the Liberals allow them to be fought by Conservatives alone, with the result that two only (out of the latter four) were elected, namely, Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt. At the General Election in 1880, again with Liberal acquiescence, Henry Broadhurst was added to their number; and in 1885 this was raised to eleven (of whom six were miners). All these, whilst pushing measures desired by the Trade Unions, acted habitually with the Liberal Party. In 1886—the Labour Representation League having faded away about 1881—the Congress appointed a “Labour Electoral Committee” to do the same work; but this was never able to free itself from subserviency to the Liberal Party, and it achieved no success, dying away in 1893. Some personal reminiscences are given in “Labour Representation Thirty Years Ago,” by Henry Broadhurst, M.P., in the Fourth Annual Report of General Federation of Trade Unions, 1903; see also History of Labour Representation, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912.
[712]In a “scribbling diary” of 1884 is the following entry:
“Written by Jas. K. Hardie, born August 15, 1856, married August 3, 1879, began work as a message boy in Glasgow when 8 years and 9 months old, wrought for some time also in a printing office in Trongate, in the brass finishing shop of the Anchor Line Shipping Co., also as a rivet heater in Thompson’s heatyard. Left Glasgow in the year 1866 and went into No. 18 pit of the Moss at Newarthill, from thence to Quarter Iron Works, and again to one or two other collieries in neighbourhood of Hamilton. Was elected Secretary to Miners’ Association in 1878, and for the same position in Ayrshire in 1879; resigned April, 1882, when got appointment unsolicited as correspondent to Cumnock News. Brought up an atheist, converted to Christianity in 1878.”
Keir Hardie, whose kindliness and integrity of character endeared him to all who knew him, was from 1887 down to his death in 1915 the apostle of “independency” in the political organisation of Labour. He sat in the Trades Union Congress from 1887 to 1895 as representative of the Ayrshire Miners; and in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1895 (for West Ham), from 1906 to 1915 (for Merthyr). He was Chairman of the “I.L.P.” from 1893 to 1898, and again in 1914. Pending the publication of a biography by W. Stewart, reference may be made to a biographical Sketch entitled From Pit to Parliament, by Frank Smith; a character sketch by F. Pethick Lawrence in the Labour Record for August 1905; the issues of the Labour Leader for September 30 and October 7, 1915; and an article entitled “An Old Diary,” by F. J. in the Socialist Review, January 1919.
[713]Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1887.
[714]It is said that the Liberal Party agents attempted, in vain, to bribe him to withdraw; eventually offering as high a price as a safe Liberal seat on the first opportunity, all his election expenses, and £300 a year—if only he would wear the Liberal badge!
[715]See, for instance, the following “Fabian Tracts,” which had a large circulation among Trade Unionists: No. 6 of 1887, “The True Radical Programme”; No. 11 of 1890, “The Workers’ Political Programme”; No. 40 of 1892, “The Fabian Election Manifesto”; No. 49 of 1894, “A Plan of Campaign for Labour” (History of the Fabian Society, by E. R. Pease, 1916).
[716]These included John Burns (Amalgamated Society of Engineers), J. Havelock Wilson (National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union), Joseph Arch (Agricultural Labourers’ Union), W. R. (afterwards Sir William) Cremer (General Union of Carpenters), G. Howell (Operative Bricklayers’ Society), J. Rowlands (an ex-watchcase-maker), and eight coalminers.
[717]By J. O’Grady (Furnishing Trades), afterwards M.P. for Leeds; Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1898.
[718]This was adopted in preference to what was considered a more extreme proposal (moved by P. Vogel of the Waiters’ Union, a Socialist), appointing the Trades Union Congress itself the organisation for independent Labour representation in Parliament; requiring every Union to contribute a halfpenny per member per annum, and making the Parliamentary Committee disburse the election expenses and the salaries of the members returned to the House of Commons (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899).
It was afterwards stated that the leaders of the Trades Union Congress had had in contemplation the subordination of the Labour Representation Committee to the Congress. But with a different constituency the new body had necessarily to be an independent organisation; and in 1904 the General Purposes Committee reported to the Trades Union Congress, which endorsed the report, that any resolution to endorse or amend the constitution of the Labour Representation Committee would not be in order at the Trades Union Congress (ibid., 1904).
[719]D. J. (afterwards Sir David) Shackleton (Lancashire Weavers) was allowed a walk-over at Clitheroe in 1902; and in 1903 W. (afterwards the Rt. Honourable W.) Crooks (Coopers) carried Woolwich after an exciting contest, and Arthur (afterwards the Rt. Honourable Arthur) Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders) won Barnard Castle in a three-cornered fight.
[720]In some Unions outside influence, notably that of the railway companies, went to the expense of printing and distributing hundreds of thousands of forms by which dissentient members could claim exemption from the tiny “political” contribution; and in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, in particular, thousands of such claims were made. The number has now greatly diminished (1920).
[721]The Daily Citizen was started by a separate limited company, in which the control was permanently secured to representatives of the Trade Unions and the Labour Party, on November 8, 1912. The total capital raised from the Trade Unions from first to last was approximately £200,000. This important journalistic venture, starting under good auspices, met with untoward circumstances. It was crippled by a legal decision that Trade Unions had no power to subscribe to its cost, or even to make investments in its shares (an inference from the Osborne Judgement, which was reversed by the Trade Union Act of 1913, subject to compliance with the conditions as to political expenditure). Before this set-back could be got over, the outbreak of war upset all financial calculations, and made the conduct of a newspaper increasingly onerous. The paper stopped on June 5, 1915, and the company was wound up, all creditors being paid in full, but the shareholders losing practically all that they had ventured. The failure was a serious blow to the Labour Party, which has been badly in want of a daily newspaper—a lack supplied in 1919 by the energetic and adventurous Daily Herald, which, under the direction of Mr. George Lansbury, has drawn to itself an unusual amount of talent, and now needs only whole-hearted support from the Trade Unions.
[722]It was, for instance, only the determined private resistance of the Trade Unionist leaders of the Labour Party that compelled the Government to abandon its project of introducing several hundred thousand Chinese labourers into Great Britain; a project which, if carried out, not only might have been calamitous in its effect upon the Standard of Life of the British workman—not to mention other evil consequences—but would almost certainly have also led to a Labour revolt against the continuance of the war. In this connection may be noted the valuable work done throughout the war, not in the interests of Trade Unionism only, but in those of the wage-earning class, and of the community as a whole, by the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee (J. S. Middleton, Honorary Secretary), a body which included representatives not only of the Parliamentary Committee, Labour Party, and General Federation, but also of the Co-operative Union, the National Union of Teachers, and other organisations. The valuable though often unwelcome assistance which this Committee gave to the Government by insisting on the redress of grievances that officialdom would have ignored, and by its working out of policy and persistence in agitation on such matters as pensions, limitation of prices, food-rationing, rent restriction, and other subjects, on which its publications had marked results, deserve the attention of the historian.
[723]Subsequently Mr. J. R. Clynes (National Union of General Workers) was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food; and on Lord Rhondda’s death he succeeded him as Minister of Food.
[724]See the printed reports of Labour Party Conferences and Trades Union Congresses, 1914-19.
[725]Report of the Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference, February 15, 1915.
[726]Mr. Hodge succeeded to Mr. Barnes as Minister of Pensions, Mr. Roberts to Mr. Hodge as Minister of Labour, and Mr. G. J. Wardle (National Union of Railwaymen) to Mr. Roberts as Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade.
[727]Memorandum on War Aims(Labour Party), February 1918.
[728]It is difficult not to be struck with the greater breadth of vision, the higher idealism, and (as we venture to say) the larger statesmanship of the Labour Party in its projects and proposals for the resettlement of the world after the Great War, compared with those which the statesmen and diplomatists of the capitalist parties of Great Britain, France, Italy, and, as we grieve to say, also the United States, with the acquiescence of deliberately inflamed popular electorates, succeeded in embodying in the Treaty of Peace. Apart from the indefensible redistributions of political sovereignty, not essentially differing in spirit from those of the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 (and probably less stable even than these), against which Labour opinion had strongly protested in advance, it is impossible not to regret the failure to incorporate in the Treaty the proposals, for which the Labour Party had secured the support of the organised working-class opinion of the world, for (i.) the universal abandonment of discriminatory fiscal barriers to international trade; (ii.) the administration of Colonial possessions exclusively in the interest of the local inhabitants, and on the basis of equality of opportunity for traders of all nations; (iii.) concerted international control of the exportable surplus of materials and food-stuffs of all the several countries, so as to mitigate, as far as possible, in the general world-shortage which the Labour Party foresaw, the inevitable widespread starvation in the most necessitous areas, whether enemy, allied, or neutral; (iv.) deliberate Government action in each country for the prevention of unemployment, instead of letting it occur and then merely relieving the unemployed. In questions of foreign policy the Labour Party, inspired by its idealism, has shown itself at its best, instead of this department of politics being, as is often ignorantly assumed, altogether beyond its capacity.
[729]The new constitution and enlarged programme which the Labour Party adopted at its Conferences of 1917-18, after six months’ consideration and discussion by the constituent organisations, were little more than a ratification for general adoption of what had become the practice of particular districts. Thus, the more active Local Labour Parties, such as those of Woolwich and Blackburn, had long welcomed the adhesion of supporters who were not manual workers. The successive annual Conferences had passed resolutions which, taken together, amounted to a pretty complete programme of constructive legislation, wholly Collectivist in principle. Hence the deliberate and formal opening of the Party, through the Local Labour Parties, to “workers by brain” as well as “workers by hand”; and the explicit adoption, as a programme, of Labour and the New Social Order were not such innovations as the newspapers made out and as the public generally supposed. But they created a sensation, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States and in the British Dominions; and they led to a considerable accession of membership, largely from the professional and middle classes, which was steadily increased as the unsatisfactory character of the Treaty of Peace, the continued “militarism” of the Government, and the aggression of a “Protectionist” capitalism became manifest.
[730]Messrs. Barnes, Roberts (who became Minister of Food), Parker, and Wardle.
[731]Mr. Henderson was re-elected to Parliament in 1919 at a bye-election, capturing a strong Conservative seat at Widnes (Lancashire).
[732]A “Joint Board”—from which the General Federation of Trade Unions was afterwards excluded—and, later on, joint meetings of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, did something to remove friction.
[733]For the successive experiments in Co-operative Production by Associations of Producers the student is referred to The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb) (1891); Co-operative Production, by Benjamin Jones (1894); and, for a more recent survey, the supplement to The New Statesman of February 14, 1914, entitled “Co-operative Production and Profit Sharing.”
[734]See Towards Social Democracy? by Sidney Webb (1916); and for recent surveys, the supplements to The New Statesman of May 30, 1914, and May 8, 1915, entitled, respectively, “The Co-operative Movement” and “State and Municipal Enterprise.”
[735]For a recent survey of Professional Association in England and Wales—the only general study of it known to us—see the supplements to the New Statesman of September 25 and October 2, 1915 (“English Teachers and their Professional Associations”), and April 21 and 28, 1917 (“Professional Associations”). The student will note the distinction between two types of associations among professional brain-workers, one having essentially Trade Union purposes, the other (which we distinguish as the Scientific Society) concerned only for the increase of knowledge.
[736]We add as an Appendix an extract from the concluding chapter of our Industrial Democracy, published in 1897, in which we dealt with this point.
[737]We do not discuss here all the difficulties inherent in the government of a large and populous community—such, for instance, as that of combining a large measure of local autonomy (which is what many people mean by freedom) with the necessary unity of national policy and central control (without which there would be gross inequality, internecine strife, and chaos). This difficulty has to be faced alike by Industrial Unionists, Gild Socialists, and the advocates of Democracy based on geographical constituencies. Nor have we mentioned the problems, in which the Trade Unions have their own wealth of experience, as to the relationship between elected representatives and their constituents; between representative assemblies and executive committees; and between executive committees and the official staff. These problems and difficulties (on which we have written in our Industrial Democracy) are common to all democratic systems of administration, whether based on constituencies of producers, consumers, or citizens. It seems to us that constituencies of producers present special difficulties of their own, such as (i.) that of defining the boundaries between industries or services, and (ii.) the problem, within an industry or a service, of how to provide for the representation of numerically unequal distinct sections, groups, or grades, each with its own technique. The further we go in Democracy the more complicated it becomes, and the greater the need for knowledge.
[738]This is well put by an American economist. “The Trade Union programme, or rather the Trade Union programmes, for each Trade Union has a programme of its own, is not the unrelated economic demands and methods which it is usually conceived to be, but it is a closely integrated social philosophy and plan of action. In the case of most Union types the programme centres indeed about economic demands and methods, but it rests on the broad foundation of the conception of right, of rights, and of general theory peculiar to the workers; and it fans out to reflect all the economic, ethical, juridical, and social hopes and fears, aims, attitudes, and aspirations of the group. It expresses the workers’ social theory and the rules of the game to which they are committed, not only in industry but in social affairs generally. It is the organised workers’ conceptual world” (Trade Unionism in the United States, by R. F. Hoxie, p. 280).