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

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

Trades Councils

Of another form of loose federation of the branches of all the Trade Unions within a given area we have already described the origin and the development in the local Trades Councils. These have gone on increasing in number, much more than in strength, until in 1920 we estimate that more than 500 are in existence, with an aggregate affiliated membership running into several millions of Trade Unionists. The character of their active membership, their functions, and their proceedings have remained much as we described them thirty years ago; but they have, on the whole, increased in strength and local influence, as well as in numbers and membership. They were, as we shall presently mention, somewhat arbitrarily excluded in 1895 from the Trades Union Congress, of which they were actually the originators; and although they have since joined in various provincial federations of Trades Councils,[634] these have never acquired any great strength, and do little more than arrange for co-operation in local demonstrations. An attempt to form a National Federation of Trades Councils did not succeed. On the other hand, as we shall describe in Chapter XI., the Trades Councils were, from its establishment in 1900, admitted, equally with Trade Unions, as constituents of the Labour Representation Committee (now the Labour Party), and whether as Trades Councils, or (notably with the smaller ones) in their new form of “Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties,” they are coming slowly to form its geographical basis. It is more and more on the political side that they are in some degree succeeding in uniting the energies of the Trade Unions of a particular town. This is especially the case so far as municipal politics are concerned. They have, for instance, been the main force in securing the general adoption of the Fair Wages Clause, and in furthering the election of Labour Candidates to local governing bodies. But they are rigidly excluded from all participation in the government or trade policy of the Unions; and, so far as Trade Unionism itself is concerned, their direct influence on questions of national scope is not great. Consisting, as in the main they do, of the delegates elected by branches of national societies, they are hampered by the narrow limits of the branch autonomy. For in trade matters the branch can bring to the Council no power which it does not itself possess, whilst towards any action involving expense by the Council it can, in many Unions, contribute only the voluntary extra-subscriptions of its members. During the present century, however, many Unions have started paying from central funds the affiliation fees of their branches to Trades Councils. Down to the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, the resources of the Councils accordingly seldom sufficed for more than the hire of a room to meet in,[635] the necessary postage and stationery, and the payment of a few pounds a year for the “loss of time” of their principal officers. In no case except London does a Trades Council as such, even in 1920, pay a “full-time” salary, so as to command the whole time of a single salaried official, though the Trades Councils of cities like Glasgow, Manchester, and Bradford have salaried secretaries who have other duties; and where the Trades Council is combined with the Local Labour Party it is more and more coming to have the services of a Registration Officer or Election Agent, whose salary is usually provided as part of the election expenses of the Labour candidate.

For a long time it could hardly be said that the Trades Councils enjoyed even the moral support of the great Unions. The central executives of the national societies were apt to view with suspicion and jealousy the existence of governing bodies in which they were not directly represented. The local branches, if not actually forbidden, were not encouraged to adhere to what might conceivably become a rival authority. The strong county Unions frequently stood aloof unless they were allowed an overwhelming representation. One of the notable changes of the present century has been the diminution of this jealousy of the Trades Councils. We know of no case in which branches are now forbidden to join a Trades Council. In most cases, although permission may have to be obtained from the Executive Council or Committee, it is nowadays readily granted, and with the recognition of the need for political action, between 1901 and 1913, came positive encouragement to the branches to affiliate to the Trades Councils of their localities. [636]

It remains, however, true in 1920 as in 1890 that the Trades Councils do not include the national leaders of the Trade Union world. The salaried officials of the old-established societies seldom take part in their proceedings. The London Trades Council, for instance, the classic meeting-place of the Junta, has long since ceased to be able to count among its delegates the General Secretaries of the Engineers, Bricklayers, Railwaymen, Steel-smelters, or of any other of the great Societies having their head offices in London. The powerful coterie of cotton officials forms no part of the Manchester Trades Council. Of the boilermakers, neither the General Secretary nor any one of the nine District Delegates is usually to be found on a Trades Council. The Miners’ Agents are notorious for abstention from the Councils in their localities. This, however, is due nowadays, whatever may once have been the reason, principally to the enormous additions to the work of all the salaried officials of the Trade Union world, which make it impossible for the majority of them to attend Trades Council meetings. The Trades Councils now serve as a useful training-ground, wider than that of the Trade Union Branch, for those whom we have elsewhere described as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement, from whose ranks nearly all the Trade Union leaders emerge.

Apart from their constant activity in municipal politics, and their energetic support of the Labour Party in all elections, the Trades Councils have, in the present century, considerably increased in usefulness. They have given valuable assistance in Trade Union propaganda, alike within their own districts and in the adjacent rural districts. No small part of the increase in Trade Union membership, notably among nondescript workers in the towns, and the agricultural labourers in the country, is to be ascribed to the constant work and support of some of the more active among them. They have done much to appease quarrels among the local branches of different Unions, and they are occasionally able to intervene successfully as arbitrators.[637] Even without formal arbitration they bring warring parties together. They nominate working-class representatives to many local committees and conferences, and serve, in this way, as useful links with public administration. Some of them have, of recent years, done a great deal to promote the better education of the artisan class. They affiliate to the Workers’ Educational Association or the Labour College, and support its classes; they arrange public meetings and obtain outside speakers; they affiliate to the Labour Research Department, which has a special “Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties Section”; they subscribe to the travelling library of book-boxes maintained by the Fabian Society; they frequently issue their own monthly bulletin of Trade Union and Labour news, or journal of local government information, or at least their annual Year-Book; and they act as distributing centres for the nationally published pamphlets and leaflets—sometimes even for the more popular books on Labour questions.[638] They have come, in several centres, to form, by Joint Councils, an indispensable connecting link between the Trade Union and Co-operative Movements, and they serve, more than any other agency, as the cement between the local branches of these two movements and the Labour Party itself. To what extent they are destined, in their character of constituent members of the Labour Party, sometimes actually combined with Local Labour Parties (in the latter cases with the inclusion, since 1918, of a section of individual members, Trade Unionists or others, “workers by hand or by brain”), to develop an effective political organisation, drawing together the whole of the supporters of the Labour Party in each Parliamentary constituency, remains yet to be demonstrated.