The Increased Reliance on Direct Action
The acceptance, during the last decade, by Parliament, by the Executive Government, and by public opinion, of the Trade Union organisation as part of the machinery of government in all matters concerning the life and labour of the manual working class, has been coincident, some would say paradoxically coincident, with an increased reliance on the strike, commonly known as the method of Direct Action, and with an enlargement of the purposes for which this method is used by Trade Unionists. There is an impression in the public mind, which easily forgets its previous impressions of the same kind, that we are to-day (1920) living in an era of strikes. Although this impression is not justified by the number of strikes, as compared with those of 1825, 1833-34, 1857-60, 1871-74, and 1885-86, there is some basis for the feeling. The strikes and threats of strikes during the past decade (excluding the four years of war) have been on a larger scale, and, in a sense, more menacing, than those of previous periods. When we published, in 1897, our detailed analysis of the theory and practice of contemporary Trade Unionism (Industrial Democracy), the very term “direct action” was unknown in this country. The strike was regarded, not as a distinct method of Trade Union action, but merely as the culminating incident of a breakdown of the Method of Collective Bargaining.[701] The Trade Union plea for the right to strike has always been a simple one. It is a mere derivative of the right of Freedom of Contract. Whenever an individual workman had the right to refuse to enter or continue in a contract of service, any group of individuals might, if they chose, exercise a like freedom. After the collapse of Owenism and Chartism all thought of using the weapon of the strike, otherwise than as an incident in Collective Bargaining with the employers, seems to have left the Trade Union Movement in Great Britain. Indeed, during the last half of the nineteenth century, the use of the weapon of the strike was falling into disrepute, even as an incident of Collective Bargaining, not only among the officials of the great trade friendly societies, such as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and Carpenters, but also among the younger and more militant members of the Trade Union movement. The “extremists” of the last decade of the nineteenth century, as we have described in a previous chapter, were out for the “capture” of Parliament and Local Authorities by an “independent” Party of Labour; and political action was commonly regarded as the shortest and most convenient way of securing not only Socialist but also the distinctively Trade Union objects. It was at that time left to the “reactionaries” in the Trade Union Movement, who disliked the idea of a political Labour Party, to advocate reliance on “ourselves alone.” [702]
But with the revolution of thought that we have described there has arisen, with regard to Direct Action, a change of practice. In 1913-14 there was an outburst of exasperated strikes designed, we may almost say, to supersede Collective Bargaining—to repudiate any making of long-term agreements, to spring demand after demand upon employers, to compel every workman to join the Union, avowedly with the view of building up the Trade Union as a dominant force. This spasm of industrial “insurrectionism” was abruptly stopped by the outbreak of war. The “political” element creeps in with the strikes and threats of strikes of the Miners’ Federation in 1912 and 1919, designed, not to further Collective Bargaining with the employers, but to cause the Government and Parliament to alter the organisation of the industry, in the earlier case by the enactment of a Minimum Wage law, and in the other by the elimination of the capitalist profitmaker in favour of public ownership and workers’ control. During the years of war Direct Action took another form. The weapon of a concerted refusal to work was used by some Trade Unions, in matters entirely unconnected with their conditions of employment, in order to prevent particular individuals from doing what they wished to do. The most sensational examples were afforded by the National Union of Sailors and Firemen in 1917-18, when its members, by refusing to work, at the dictation of Mr. J. Havelock Wilson, the Secretary of the Union, prevented certain Labour Leaders[703] from proceeding to Petrograd, actually by direction of the Government; and subsequently others[704] from going to Paris with Government passports, on the instructions of the Labour Party, because the Union, or at any rate Mr. Havelock Wilson, disapproved of these visits, and of their supposed object in arranging for an International Labour and Socialist Congress. Another case was the withdrawal by the Electrical Trades Union in 1918 of their members (taking with them the indispensable fuses) from the Albert Hall in London, when the directors of the Hall cancelled its letting for a Labour Demonstration, of the purposes and resolutions of which they disapproved, or thought that their patrons would disapprove. What the Electrical Trades Union intimated was that, unless the Hall was allowed, as heretofore, to be used for Labour meetings, it should not be used for a forthcoming demonstration of the supporters of the Coalition Government, or for any other meetings. The result was that (it is said on a hint from Downing Street) the directors of the Hall withdrew their objection to the Labour Demonstration, and have since continued to allow such meetings. Yet another example of Direct Action was given by the printing staffs of certain newspaper offices in London during the railway strike of 1919, when they threatened instantly to withdraw their labour, and thus absolutely to prevent the issue of the newspapers, unless the use of “lying posters” was given up, and unless the case of the National Union of Railwaymen was fairly treated in the papers, and accorded reasonable space. The gravest case of all was the threat by the Miners’ Federation in 1919, that all the coal-mines might stop working unless Compulsory Military Service was immediately brought to an end, and unless the policy of military intervention in Russia against the Bolshevik Government of Russia was abandoned. By what was perhaps a fortunate coincidence the Secretary of State for War was able to declare that all Compulsory Military Service was to cease at or before the end of the current financial year; and the Prime Minister to announce that no more troops, and, after certain consignments already arranged for, no more military stores, would be sent in aid of those who were attacking the Bolshevik Government.
How far can these instances of Direct Action be deemed to indicate a change of thought in the Trade Union world with regard to the use of the strike weapon? We must note that, in spite of the temporary lull in strikes in the latter part of the last century, there has been no change in Trade Union policy with regard to the strike in disputes with employers about the conditions of employment. The Trade Unions have always included in this term the dismissal of men for reasons other than their inefficiency as workmen, the engagement of non-Unionists, the presence of an obnoxious foreman or manager, or any interference with the conduct of employees outside the works. Nor has there been any development in the original Trade Union position with regard to sympathetic strikes in aid of other sections of workers in their struggles with their employers. It is possible that some of the insurrectionary strikes of 1911-14 were inspired by the new thought that we have described—the disillusionment as to the Parliamentary potency of a Labour Party, and the vision of a Democracy based on industrial organisation and secured by industrial action. But, in the main, the increased frequency and magnitude of strikes in these years are sufficiently accounted for by the continued fall in real wages due to rising prices, combined with the steadily improving organisation of the workers concerned. There was a new element in the proposal of the Miners’ Federation in 1919 to strike if the Government did not fulfil its pledge to carry into effect the Sankey Report described in the last chapter. The significant and authoritative declaration in the first Report of March 20, 1919, that “the present system of ownership and working in the coal industry stands condemned, and some other system must be substituted for it, either nationalisation or a method of unification by national purchase and/or by joint control,” and the explicit acceptance of this Report by the Government “in the spirit and in the letter,” formed an integral part of the bargain between the Miners’ Federation and the Government, on the strength of which they forewent the strike at the end of March 1919 on which they had decided. It can hardly be contended that the “present system of ownership and working” is not a necessary part of the conditions of employment, or that the Miners are not entitled to refuse to enter into contracts of service under a system that Mr. Bonar Law agrees with Mr. Justice Sankey, and nine out of the other twelve members of the Royal Commission, in holding to “stand condemned.” On the other hand, though the Government controls the industry and dictates the wages, the alterations in the conditions of employment that the Miners’ Federation asks for require not only one but probably several Acts of Parliament, which a majority of the members of the present House of Commons, notwithstanding the explicit Government pledge, refuses to pass. What the Miners’ Federation threatens, by a stoppage of the coal industry, is to coerce into agreement with them not their employers, the colliery owners, not even the Ministry with whom they made the bargain, but, in effect, the recalcitrant capitalist majority of the House of Commons which cannot be displaced without a General Election.
But an entirely new development of Direct Action, alike in form and in substance, is the distinctly political, or, as we should prefer to call it, the non-economic strike—that is, the strike, not for any alteration in the conditions of employment of any section of the Trade Union world, but with a view to enforce, either on individuals, on Parliament, or on the Government, some other course of action desired by the strikers. So far as we know, there is, on this question, no consistent body of opinion in the Trade Union world; all that we find are currents of opinion arising from different assumptions of social expediency. There is, first, a small section of Trade Unionists who are Syndicalists or extreme Industrial Unionists in opinion, and who look forward to the supersession of political Democracy, and the reconstitution of society on the basis of the suffrages of the several trades. Like the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, though on different grounds, they do not acknowledge the competency of the existing Parliament to undertake the government of the country, and they advocate Direct Action as the only weapon of revolt accessible to the workers organised as workers. But it was no such theory of social revolution that induced Mr. Havelock Wilson to prevent the visit of Mr. G. H. Roberts and Mr. MacDonald to Petrograd, when the Government wished them to go; or to prevent Mr. Henderson and M. Camille Huysmans from using their passports to Paris. Nor were the electricians of the Albert Hall inspired by faith in an immediate revolution of the Russian type. It cannot even be suggested that the widespread approval by the more active spirits of the Trade Union world of the proposed strike to stop the intervention of Great Britain in support of the reactionary Russian leaders was accompanied by any desire to set up in Great Britain the constitution which is believed to obtain in Moscow and Petrograd. We must look elsewhere for the motive that underlies and is held by many to justify the non-economic or “political” strike.
We suggest that the explanation is a more complex one. We have first the impulsive tendency of some men in all classes to use any powers that they possess, whether over land, capital, or labour, to dictate to their fellow-men a course of conduct on any question on which they feel hotly, even if it is wholly unconnected with their several economic functions. This delight in an anarchic use of economic power is, it is needless to say, not peculiar to those whose economic power is that of labour. There have been innumerable instances, within our own memories, among landlords and capitalists, of actions no less arbitrary than that of Mr. Havelock Wilson (who, it must be remembered, had the general approval of the capitalist press; and, in the case of the attempted internment in this country of a distinguished Belgian visitor, M. Huysmans, the connivance of the naval officers, if not of the Admiralty). We find within the last few decades many cases of landlords who have ejected persons, not because they were objectionable tenants, or had failed to pay their rent, but because they had supported a political candidate, or had led to action on the part of the Local Authority, to which the landlord objected. We have seen landed proprietors refusing sites for Nonconformist chapels, not because they objected to buildings of that character, or were dissatisfied with the price offered, but because they disliked the theology of the promoters. We have heard of banks refusing to the Trade Unions who were their customers any accommodation at all on the occasion of a strike, merely because they disliked the strike. We have seen employers dismissing workmen, not for their inefficiency, not even for their Trade Union activities, which might be held to affect the economic interest of the capitalist, but because the workmen held different political opinions from those of the employer. But these cases of the use of economic power to prevent individuals from pursuing or promoting their own religious or political creeds are emphatically condemned by the Trade Union Movement. Thus no Trade Union support was overtly given to Mr. Havelock Wilson, even by those Trade Union leaders who agreed with him in detesting any meeting between Britons and enemy subjects.
We have a quite different class of cases when Direct Action is taken in reprisal for the Direct Action of other persons or groups of persons. This was the case in the strike of the electricians at the Albert Hall. It was a reprisal for the use by the directors of the Albert Hall of their power over lettings to ban opinions that they happened to dislike, whilst permitting the use of their hall to the other side. A more difficult case is that of the threatened refusal to work of the compositors against the newspapers who denied fair play to the railwaymen. Here our judgement may depend on what view is taken of the function of newspapers; how far are newspapers what their name implies, the public purveyors of news? Supposing that all the capitalist press were deliberately to boycott all Labour news, whilst deliberately giving currency to false statements about Labour Leaders and the Labour Movement, would the compositors, as representing the Trade Union world in this industry, be justified in a strike? The only conclusion we can suggest is that, human nature being instinctively militant, any anarchic use of the power given by one form of monopoly will lead to a similar anarchic use of the power given by another form of monopoly.
We come now to the third class of use of the method of Direct Action, a general strike of the manual workers to compel the Government of the country to abstain from political courses distasteful to those who control a monopoly of labour power, or to the majority of them. This form of Direct Action is justified by a minority of Trade Unionists, who consider that under the present constitution of Parliament the organised workmen have practically no chance of getting their fair share of representation—an argument strengthened by every election trick, and especially by the partisan use of the capitalist press as an election instrument. The majority of Trade Unionists, however, do not, at the present time, seem to support this view. They reply that the manual workers and their wives now constitute, in every district, a majority of the electorate. They can, if they choose, return to Parliament a Labour majority and make a Labour Government. This very consideration, indeed, seems to make any such general strike impracticable, and, as a matter of fact, no such proposal of a general strike has yet been endorsed by the Trades Union Congress. We can imagine occasions that might, in the eyes of the Trade Union world, fully justify a general strike of non-economic or political character. If, for instance, a reactionary Parliament were to pass a measure disfranchising the bulk of the manual workers, or depriving them of political power by such a device as the “Three Class Franchise” of Prussia and Saxony—if any Act were passed depriving the Trade Unions of the rights and liberties now conceded to them—if the Executive or the judges were to use against the Trade Unions, by injunction or otherwise, any weapon that might be fished up from the legal armoury, confiscating their funds or prohibiting their action—then, indeed, we might see the Trades Union Congress recommending a General Strike; and it would be supported not only by the wage-earning class as a whole, but also by a large section of the middle class, and even by some members of the House of Lords. That is one reason why, short of madness, no such act would be committed by the Government or by Parliament. If any such act were perpetrated, it would probably involve a revolution not in the British but in the continental sense. It must be remembered that the “last word” in Direct Action is with the police and the army, and there not with the officers but with the rank and file.
To sum up, the vast majority of Trade Unionists object to Direct Action, whether by landlords or capitalists or by organised workers, for objects other than those connected with the economic function of the Direct Actionists. Trade Unionists, on the whole, are not prepared to disapprove of Direct Action as a reprisal for Direct Action taken by other persons or groups. With regard to a general strike of non-economic or political character, in favour of a particular home or foreign policy, we very much doubt whether the Trade Union Congress could be induced to endorse it, or the rank and file to carry it out, except only in case the Government made a direct attack upon the political or industrial liberty of the manual working class, which it seemed imperative to resist by every possible means, not excluding forceful revolution itself.