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

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

The Revolution in Thought

The new ideas which are to-day taking root in the Trade Union world centre round the aspiration of the organisations of manual workers to take part—some would urge the predominant part, a few might say the sole part—in the control and direction of the industries in which they gain their livelihood. Such a claim was made, as we have described in the third chapter of this work, in its most extreme form, by the revolutionary Trade Unionism of 1830-34; and it lingered on in the minds of the Chartists as long as any of them survived. But after the collapse, in 1848, of Chartism as an organised movement British Trade Unionism settled down to the attainment of a strictly limited end—the maintenance and progressive improvement, within each separate occupation or craft, of the terms of the bargain made by the wage-earner with the employers, including alike all the conditions of service and complete freedom from personal oppression. Hence the Trade Unionist as such, during the second half of the nineteenth century, tacitly accepted the existing organisation of industry. He discussed the rival advantages of private enterprise carried on in the interests of the capitalist profit-maker on the one hand, and of the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement or State and Municipal enterprise on the other, almost exclusively from the standpoint of whether the profit-making employers or the representatives of the consumers or the citizens offered better conditions of employment to the members of his own organisation. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century this remained the dominant working-class view. We find in the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1891-94, a striking demonstration of the strictly limited purpose of British Trade Unionism at that date. Whether we study the elaborate collection of Trade Union rules and other documents made by the Commission, or the personal evidence given by the leaders or advocates of Trade Unionism, we find from beginning to end absolutely no claim, and even no suggestion, that the Trade Union should participate in the direction of industry, otherwise than in arranging with the employers the conditions of the wage-earner’s working life.[685] One or two Unions included, among their published “objects,” vague and pious references to the desirability of co-operative production; but the assumption was always that any such co-operative production would be carried out by the members of the Union working in and managing a particular establishment, which would take its place, like any private establishment, within the framework of the capitalist system. When a Trade Union leader was also a Socialist he assumed that the “Socialisation” of industry would be carried out by the Central or Local Government, or by the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement. Hence, Mr. Tom Mann, himself a Royal Commissioner, who was called as a witness before the Commission, was a powerful advocate of nationalisation and municipalisation. “I am distinctly favourable, and am associated with those who are earnestly advocating,” he stated from the witness-chair, “the advisability of encouraging the State to at once entertain the proposal of the State control of railways. I am also identified with those who are favourable to the nationalisation of the land, which means, of course, a State control of land in the common interest; and I am continually advocating the desirability for statesmen and politicians and municipal councillors to try and understand in what particular departments of industry they can get to work and exercise their faculties in controlling trade and industry in the common interest where that interest would be likely to be secured better than under the present method.” When asked by the Duke of Devonshire whether his advocacy of the nationalisation of the railways was in the interests of the public or mainly in the interests of the workmen employed on the railways, he replied: “Not mainly on behalf of the workers; I would put it equally so. I believe it would serve the public interest, the general well-being of the community.... I do not believe that a Government Department will ever be healthy until the public themselves are healthy in this direction, and are keeping a watchful eye upon the whole governmental show and secure the general well-being by their watchfulness. I do not think that State control of industry will ever be brought about until that development on the part of the public themselves is brought about, and they desire to see it controlled in the common interest.... When a sufficient number of men are prepared to take the initiative, and educate public opinion to the desirability of a superior method of control in the common interest, then I believe it will be done, not all at once, but gradually.” [686]

But Mr. Tom Mann did not stand alone. The Independent Labour Party, the largest and the most popular of Socialist societies in the United Kingdom, established in 1893, and largely recruited from the ranks of Trade Unionists, carried on, right down to the outbreak of the Great War, a vigorous propaganda in favour of an indefinite extension of State and Municipal administration of industrial undertakings, whilst the more doctrinaire Social Democratic Federation was, in its early days, outspokenly contemptuous of the whole Trade Union Movement as a mere “palliative” of the Capitalist system. This bias in favour of the communal organisation, in favour of the government of the people by and for the people organised in geographical areas, was, until the opening of the twentieth century, equally dominant among the most “advanced” Labour and Socialist thinkers on the Continent of Europe. [687]

But in spite of the assumption that services and industries ought to be carried out by democracies of consumers and citizens, organised in geographical districts—that is, by the Central and Local Government of a Political Democracy—there always remained, in the hearts of the manual working class in Great Britain, an instinctive faith in the opposite idea of Associations of Producers owning, as such, both the instruments and the product of their labour. Throughout the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century it was pathetic to see this faith struggling on, in spite of the almost constant failure of the innumerable little manufacturing establishments carried on by Associations of Producers. What finally killed it as an ideal, in the eyes of the Trade Unionists of Great Britain, was the fact that Co-operative Production and its child, Co-partnership, were taken up by the most reactionary persons and parties in the State. Great peers and Conservative statesmen were always blessing “Co-operative Production,” and always trying to stimulate the workers to undertake business on their own account. When the invariable failure of self-governing workshops became too obvious, the advocates of Co-operative Production fell back on “Labour Co-partnership”—partnership in business with the capitalist class! This was so obviously, and almost avowedly, an attack on, or at least a proposal for the supersession of Trade Unionism, that it aroused the fiercest opposition; and the very idea became anathema in the Trade Union world. In short, there was, from the collapse of Owenism and Chartism in the eighteen-thirties and -forties, right down to 1900, practically no sign that the British Trade Unions ever thought of themselves otherwise than as organisations to secure an ever-improving Standard of Life by means of an ever-increasing control of the conditions under which they worked. They neither desired nor sought any participation in the management of the technical processes of industry (except in so far as these might affect the conditions of their employment, or the selection of persons to be employed); whilst it never occurred to a Trade Union to claim any power over, or responsibility for, buying the raw materials or marketing the product. On the contrary, the most advanced Trade Union leaders were never tired of asserting that their members must enjoy the full standard conditions of employment, whatever arrangements the employers might make with regard to the other factors of production; or however unskilful employers or groups of employers might prove to be in the buying of the raw material, or in the selling of the commodities in the markets of the world.

With the opening years of the twentieth century we become aware of a new intellectual ferment, not confined to any one country, nor even to the manual working class. We watch, emerging in various forms, new variants of the old idea of the organisation of industries and services by those who are actually carrying them on. We see it working among the brain-working professionals. Alike in England and in France the teachers in the schools and the professors in the colleges began to assert both their moral right to manage the institutions as they alone know how, and the advantage that this would be to the community. The doctors were demanding a similar control over the exercise of their own function. But the most conspicuous, and the most widely influential, of the forms taken by the idea was the revolutionary movement that spread among large sections of the wage-earners almost simultaneously in France, the classic home of associations of producers, and in the United States, with its large population of foreign immigrants. In both these countries any widespread Trade Unionism was of much more recent growth than in Great Britain, and was still regarded, alike by the employers and by the Government, as an undesirable and revolutionary force. The “syndicats” of France, and the Labour Unions among the foreign workers in the United States were, in fact, at the opening of the twentieth century, in much the same stage of development as the British Trade Unions were when they were swept into the vortex of revolutionary Owenism in 1834. Alike in their constitutions and in their declared objects, in the first decade of the new century, the General Confederation of Labour in France and the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States bear a striking resemblance to the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union that we have described in an earlier chapter; and, like that organisation, both of them excited a quite exaggerated terror in the hearts of magistrates and Ministers of State. Indeed, the doctrines and phraseology of the mass of literature turned out by French Trade Unionists between 1900 and 1910 are remarkably like—allowing for the superior literary power of the French—the pamphlets and leaflets of the Owenite Trade Unionism.[688] There is the same conception of a republic of industry, consisting of a federation of Trade Unions, local and central; the federation of shop clubs, branches, or local unions forming the Local Authority for all purposes, whilst a standing conference of the national representatives of all the Trade Unions constitutes a co-ordinating or superintending National Authority. There is the same reliance, as a means of achievement, on continuous strikes, culminating in a “general expropriatory strike.” There is the same denunciation of the political State as a useless encumbrance, and the same appeal to the soldiers to join the workers in upsetting the existing system.

We need not stay to inquire how this new ferment crossed the Atlantic or the Channel. Between 1905 and 1910 we become aware of the birth, in some of the industrial districts, of a number of new propagandist groups—more especially among the miners and engineers—groups of persons in revolt not only against the Capitalist System but against the limited aims of contemporary Trade Unionism and the usual categories of contemporary Socialism. The pioneer of the new faith in the United Kingdom seems to have been James Connolly, afterwards organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, to which we have already referred, a man of noble character and fine intelligence, whose tragic execution in 1916, after the suppression of the Dublin rising, made him one of the martyred heroes of the Irish race. Connolly, who was a disciple of the founder of the American Socialist Labour Party, Daniel De Leon, started a similar organisation on the Clyde in 1905. In opposition to the contemporary Socialist propaganda in favour of the nationalisation and municipalisation of industries and services, to be brought about by political action, he advocated the direct supersession of the Capitalist System in each workshop and in every industry, by the organised workers thereof. “It is an axiom,” he said, “enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.... That natural law leads us as individuals to unite in our craft, as crafts to unite in our industry, as industries in our class; and the finished expression of that evolution is, we believe, the appearance of our class upon the political battle-ground with all the economic power behind it to enforce its mandates. Until that day dawns our political parties of the working class are but propagandist agencies, John the Baptists of the New Redemption; but when that day dawns our political party will be armed with all the might of our class; will be revolutionary in fact as well as in thought.” “Let us be clear,” he adds, “as to the function of Industrial Unionism. That function is to build up an industrial republic inside the shell of the political State, in order that when that industrial republic is fully organised it may crack the shell of the political State and step into its place in the scheme of the universe.... Under a Socialist form of society the administration of affairs wall be in the hands of representatives of the various industries of the nation; ... the workers in the shops and factories will organise themselves into unions, each union comprising all the workers at a given industry; ... said union will democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing all foremen, etc., and regulating the routine of labour in that industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the needs of its allied trades and to the department of industry to which it belongs.... Representatives elected from these various departments of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or national government of the country. In short, Social Democracy, as its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of Democracy. Such application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of industrial organisation until it reaches the culminating point of national executive power and direction. In other words, Socialism must proceed from the bottom upwards, whereas capitalist political society is organised from above downward; Socialism will be administered by a committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of the land; capitalist society is governed by representatives elected from districts, and is based upon territorial division.”[689] A similar ferment was to be seen at work amongst the South Wales miners, giving rise to a series of propagandist organisations, preaching the doctrine of Industrial Unionism as a revolutionary force, and culminating in the much-denounced pamphlet The Miners’ Next Step, 1912, which created some sensation in the capitalist world. [690]

In 1910 we find Mr. Tom Mann, fresh from organising strikes in Australia, and inspired by a visit to Paris, preaching the new faith to large popular audiences in London and the principal provincial cities with the same sincerity and eloquence with which he had formerly advocated State and Municipal Socialism and the statutory regulation of the conditions of employment. “The Industrial Syndicalist,” he explains, holds that “to run industry through Parliament, that is by State machinery, will be even more mischievous to the working class than the existing method, for it will assuredly mean that the capitalist class will, through Government Departments, exercise over the national forces, and over the workers, a domination that is even more rigid than is the case to-day. And the Syndicalist also declares that in the near future the industrially organised workers will themselves undertake the entire responsibility of running the industries in the interest of all who work, and are entitled to enjoy the result of labour.”[691]“We therefore most certainly favour strikes; we shall always do our best to help strikes to be successful, and shall prepare the way as rapidly as possible for The General Strike of national proportions. This will be the actual Social and Industrial Revolution. The workers will refuse to any longer manipulate the machinery of production in the interest of the capitalist class, and there will be no power on earth able to compel them to work when they thus refuse.... When the capitalists get tired of running industries, the workers will cheerfully invite them to abdicate, and through and by their industrial organisations will run the industries themselves in the interests of the whole community.”[692]“Finally, and vitally essential it is,” sums up Mr. Tom Mann in 1911, “to show that economic emancipation to the working class can only be secured by the working class asserting its power in workshops, factories, warehouses, mills and mines, on ships and boats and engines, and wherever work is performed, ever extending their control over the tools of production, until, by the power of the internationally organised Proletariat, capitalist production shall entirely cease, and the industrial socialist republic will be ushered in, and thus the Social Revolution realised.” [693]

The revolutionary Industrial Unionism and Syndicalism preached by James Connolly and Tom Mann and other fervent missionaries between 1905 and 1912 did not commend itself to the officials and leaders of the Trade Unions any more than it did to the cautious and essentially Conservative-minded men and women who make up the rank and file of the British working class. But, like other revolutionary movements in England, it prepared the way for constitutional proposals. The ideal of taking over the instruments of production appealed to all intelligent workmen as workmen. To them it seemed merely Co-operative Production writ large, the ownership of the instruments and of the product of labour by the workers themselves. But the ownership and management was now to be carried out, not by small competing establishments doomed to failure, but in the industry as a whole by a “blackleg-proof” Trade Union. To the idealistic and active-minded Trade Union official in particular, weary of the perpetual haggling with employers over fractional changes in wages and hours, the prospect of becoming the representative of his fellow-workers in a self-governing industry, with all the initiative and responsibility that such a position would involve, was decidedly attractive. So long as this ideal was associated with violent and revolutionary methods, and left no room for the political democracy to which Englishmen are accustomed, or even for the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement, it failed to get accepted either by responsible officials or by the mass of sober-minded members. The bridge between the old conception of Trade Unionism and the new was built by a fresh group of Socialists, who called themselves National Guildsmen. This group of able thinkers, largely drawn from the Universities, accepted from what we may call the Communal Socialists the idea of the ownership of the instruments of production by the representatives of the citizen-consumers, but proposed to vest the management in national associations of the producers in each industry—organisations which they declared ought to include, not merely the present wage-earners, but all the workers, by hand or by brain.[694] These guilds were to grow out of the existing Trade Unions, gradually made co-extensive with each industry. We have neither the space, nor would it be within the scope of this book, to describe or criticise this conception of National Guilds, or the theories and schemes of the Guild Socialists. These theories and schemes are none the worse for being still in the making. What we are concerned with, as historians of the Trade Union Movement, is the rapid adoption between 1913 and 1920 by many of the younger leaders of the Movement, and subject to various modifications, also by some of the most powerful of the Trade Unions, of this new ideal of the development of the existing Trade Unions into self-organised, self-contained, self-governing industrial democracies, as supplying the future method of conducting industries and services. The schemes put forward by the National Union of Railwaymen, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, and the Union of Postal Workers differ widely from the revolutionary Syndicalism of Mr. Tom Mann and the large visions of the Industrial Workers of the World. They do not even go so far as the projects of the National Guildsmen. In fact, they limit the claim of the manual workers merely to participation in the management, fully conceding that the final authority must be vested in the representatives of the community of citizens or consumers. Thus we see the Annual General Meeting of the National Union of Railwaymen in 1914 resolving unanimously: “That this Congress, while reaffirming previous decisions in favour of the nationalisation of railways, and approving the action of the Executive Committee in arranging to obtain and give evidence before the Royal Commission, declares that no system of State ownership of the railways will be acceptable to organised railwaymen which does not guarantee to them their full political and social rights, allow them a due measure of control and responsibility in the safe and efficient working of the railway system, and assure to them a fair and equitable participation of the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more economical and scientific administration.”[695] In a modified form this resolution was brought forward by the Railway Clerks’ Association, supported by the N.U.R., and passed by the Trades Union Congress of 1917.[696] A similar movement in favour of participation in management has taken root among the postal workers of all kinds, in England as also in France. At the Annual Conference, in May 1919, of the Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, which had in previous years been passing resolutions on the subject, it was emphatically pointed out that the control demanded by the postal employees was not restricted to securing better conditions of employment, but that they desired to participate in directing the technical improvement of the service for the good of the community.[697] The Conference resolved: “That in view of the obstructive attitude of the Department on the question of the development of the Post Office Savings Bank, the modernising of the Post Office Insurance System, and the expansion and improvement of the Post Office Services generally, this Conference directs that representatives of the Association be appointed to investigate and report on the working of the postal cheque and transfer services from both the national and international standpoint, and that the report be widely circulated, and propaganda work undertaken, so that this development of the Post Office Savings Bank—giving a greatly improved transmission of moneys system—be introduced throughout.”[698] Finally, we may cite the scheme for the Nationalisation of the Coal-mines that the Miners’ Federation brought formally before the Coal Industry Commission in 1919. Six years previously the Miners’ Federation had had a Bill drafted and published, which provided merely for the vesting of the collieries in a Ministry of Mines, and for the administration of the whole industry by that department.[699] All that the Federation was then concerned to secure for the miners themselves was the continuance of free and lawful Trade Unionism. The Bill of 1919[700] imposed on the Minister of Mines a whole series of National and District Councils, and Pit Committees, each of which was to consist, to the extent of one half, of members nominated by the Federation, the other half being nominated by the Minister; and the expectation was not concealed that it would be by these bipartite bodies that the administration would be conducted. We record these schemes, which are by the nature of the case only imperfect drafts prepared for propaganda, not so much for their importance as precisely defined industrial constitutions, but as being indicative of the change of spirit that has come over the Trade Union world.