The railwaymen could then renew their “All Grades Movement” which the Companies in January 1907 again declined to consider, steadfastly refusing any recognition of the men’s Trade Unions, and callously denying their grievances.[621] Ballots of the membership of the Amalgamated Society and the General Union decided on a strike by 80,026 to 1857 votes, and in November 1907 a national stoppage was at hand when Mr. Lloyd George intervened as President of the Board of Trade, compelled the Companies to listen to reason, and persuaded both parties to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards, composed of equal numbers representing management and men, with an impartial chairman and authority to decide on wages and hours. These Conciliation Boards, unsatisfactory as they proved, represented a real triumph. For the first time the autocracy of the railway management was broken. There was, it is true, still no express recognition of the Trade Unions, but the men’s representatives were to be freely elected on each railway by all the employees grouped according to their grades; and these elected representatives met the management on professedly equal terms. The elections showed how thoroughly justified was the claim of the Railwaymen’s Trade Unions that they were voicing the wishes of practically the whole body of railwaymen. In spite of strenuous efforts by the management on most of the lines, and of the unfortunate jealousies among the different societies, in nearly all cases the nominees of one or other of the Unions were elected, often by large majorities. For the next few years the Amalgamated Society and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen were busy in fighting the cases of the various grades through the Conciliation Boards, and in securing thereby many small increases of wages and reductions of hours. But matters did not go smoothly. The Companies, for the most part, pursued a policy of obstruction and postponement, delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some cases deliberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than those prescribed. The “impartial” chairmen, moreover, differed among themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of the awards caused great resentment. Meanwhile the cost of living was steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind other organised workers. Progress was delayed in 1909-10 by a new set-back which the Amalgamated Society suffered in the law courts, in the prolonged litigation carried by one of its members, with capitalist assistance, right up to the House of Lords, by which the participation of any Trade Union in political activity was declared invalid—a piece of “judge-made law” to which we shall recur, and for which the Government and Parliament at first refused all redress. Suddenly, in August 1911, the pot boiled over. There was a spirit of revolt in the Labour world. In June and July the seamen and the dockers had struck, and stopped the port of London. There was an outburst of “unauthorised” railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns, and a general demand for a national strike. The Executives of the four principal railwaymen’s Unions, for once acting closely in concert, gave the Companies twenty-four hours to decide whether they would consent to meet the men’s representatives, or face a national stoppage. Once more the Government intervened, Mr. Asquith offering a Royal Commission of indefinite duration and issue, merely to propose amendments in the scheme of Conciliation Boards, and at the same time definitely informing the men—a fact which they judiciously refrained from publishing—that the Government would not hesitate to use the troops to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.[622] The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began, which, although far from universal, was sufficient to disorganise the whole railway service—as many as 200,000 men stopping work—and was rapidly bringing industry to a standstill. At the instance of Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, an overpowering display was made with the troops, which were sent to Manchester and other places, without requisition by the civil authorities, at the mere request of the Companies. In fact, a policy of repression had been decided on, and bloodshed was near at hand. In vain did the Union leaders ask Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, to take steps to obtain a meeting between the Companies’ managers and the Union representatives. Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed in the Cabinet, which peremptorily instructed the Companies to let their General Managers meet the men’s representatives face to face at the Board of Trade. For just upon twelve hours these managers, thus coerced, negotiated with four representatives of the Unions, together with Mr. Henderson and Mr. J. R. MacDonald of the Parliamentary Labour Party. At last an agreement was made—the first ever concluded between the Railway Companies as a whole and the Trade Unions of their employees—for an ending of the strike, on terms of complete reinstatement of the strikers; an immediate consideration by the Conciliation Boards of all grievances; and a prompt investigation by a bipartite Royal Commission of the dissatisfaction with these Boards, and the best way of amending the scheme.[623] When the Commission reported—it was ultimately termed a Special Committee of Inquiry—the Railwaymen’s Union once more asked the Companies to meet them for negotiation, which the Companies again refused to do. On the Unions resolving to ballot their members as to a national strike, the House of Commons set a new precedent by passing, at the instance of the Government, a resolution formally recommending a joint meeting, whereupon the Companies gave way. At the meeting that ensued a new scheme of Conciliation Boards was jointly agreed to, amending the 1907 scheme generally on the line of the Special Committee’s report, but introducing most of the other modifications that the Unions thought necessary. The machinery was made more rapid in action, and the scope of the Boards was extended. Most important of all, the men’s side of each Board was allowed to choose as secretary a person not in the employ of the Company; and it accordingly became possible for a Trade Union official to take up this work, and that not only for a single grade but, by acting for several Boards, simultaneously for all grades. This was not “recognition” in form, but at any rate the Trade Union official was let in. During the next two years, in spite of incredible obstructions, quibblings, and evasions by the Companies, a number of small improvements in the terms of service were obtained from the Boards for all the grades on practically all the lines. A result of this joint working of even greater importance was the merging, in 1913, after prolonged negotiations, of three out of the four principal societies of manual railway workers[624]—the Amalgamated, the General Union, and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen—into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under the title of the National Union of Railwaymen.
The “New Model” for Trade Union structure thus deliberately adopted merits attention. In contrast with what we have called the “New Model,” in 1851 of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that of 1913 represents an attempt to include, in a single “amalgamated” Union, all the various “crafts” and grades of workers engaged in a single industry throughout the whole kingdom. The declared object of the National Union of Railwaymen is “to secure the complete organisation of all workers employed on or in connection with any railway in the United Kingdom.” It thus definitely negatives both “sectionalism” and “localism” in favour of “Industrial Unionism.” Indeed, it may be suggested that the new constitution passes, by definition, even beyond the “Industrial Unionism,” to which the most advanced section of Trade Unionists were aspiring, into what has been termed “Employmental Unionism,” in that it seeks to enrol in one Union, not merely all sections of railway workers, but actually all who are employed by any railway undertaking—thus including, not only the engineering and wood-working mechanics in the railway engineering workshops,[625] but also the cooks, waiters, and housemaids at the fifty-five railway hotels; the sailors and firemen on board the railway companies’ fleets of steamers, and (though no trouble has actually arisen about them) the compositors, lithographers, and bookbinders whom the railway printing works employ in the production of tickets, time-tables, office stationery, and advertisement posters; even the men whom one, at least, of the largest companies keeps in constant employment at the manufacture of crutches and wooden legs for the disabled members of its staff. This all-inclusiveness has, since 1913, brought the National Union of Railwaymen into conflict with many other Trade Unions; and the question of the proper lines of demarcation has so far remained unsettled. The principal new feature in constitutional structure was the establishment of a distinct legislature—the Annual General Meeting—consisting, in addition to the President and General Secretary, of sixty representatives elected by the membership in geographical constituencies of approximately equal size. Subordinate to the Annual General Meeting (which can be summoned specially when required) is the Executive Committee of the President, General Secretary, and twenty-four other members, the latter being severally elected by the device of the Single Transferable Vote by each of four prescribed departments of members in each of six gigantic geographical constituencies; one-third of such representatives retiring annually, and after each triennial term of service, becoming ineligible for three years, whilst the Branches to which they belong also become unable to nominate representatives for a like term. The Executive Committee, which, like the Annual General Meeting, consists of working railwaymen, paid only for their days of service, meets quarterly and appoints four sectional sub-committees, which must also meet at least quarterly. Noteworthy, too, is the District Council, which—constitutionally only a voluntary federation of geographically adjacent Branches for propagandist and purely consultative purposes—has, with an unofficial National Federation of District Councils, developed into an active “caucus” of the more energetic members for discussing and promoting “forward movements” in the Annual General Meeting, and “organising” the elections to the Executive Committee.
With such a constitution, and the administration of extensive friendly benefits in a society now approaching half a million members, it is inevitable that the Executive Committee should wield extensive powers. It initiates and conducts all trade movements, and can therefore call a national strike, even without a ballot vote; and whilst it may take a ballot vote at any time on any question, the rules expressly provide that it is not to be bound by the members’ decision. Originally the Executive Committee had power also “to settle” any dispute; but this was withdrawn by resolutions of the Annual General Meetings of 1915 and 1916, which required all settlements to be reported to itself for ratification. In practice very large powers, both of office management and of negotiation, are necessarily exercised by the six salaried officers, the President, the General Secretary, and the four Assistant Secretaries, each of whom is responsible for a separate branch of the Union’s work. They have, however, not been able to prevent a series of “unauthorised” strikes, local or sectional in character.
At the beginning of 1914 everything pointed to a further forward movement by the N.U.R. Its Annual General Meeting cordially accepted the Miners’ proposal to unite with them and the Transport Workers in the so-called Triple Alliance. Moreover, its desires now began to go beyond improvements in wages and hours. Its representatives had, for twenty years, sometimes moved and always supported the resolutions of the Trades Union Congress in favour of the Nationalisation of Railways. In 1913 the Railway Clerks’ Association had gone a step further, and had asked also for participation in control. In 1914 the resolution intended to be submitted on behalf of the N.U.R. declared 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 in the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more economical and scientific administration.” Here we have the first expressions of the desire for participation in the management of the railways.[626] From that time forward the demand has become ever more explicit and determined. Meanwhile, however, the first step was plainly the drastic amendment of the scheme of Conciliation Boards; and proposals were under consideration when war broke out. In marked contrast with their previous action, the Railway Companies were actually meeting the Union representatives in a joint committee of seven a side. The growth in membership of the National Union of Railwaymen at that date to over 300,000, and its entry into the “Triple Alliance” of miners, railwaymen, and transport workers, had, in fact, at last compelled the Companies, in fact, to concede “recognition,” although they denied at the time that they were so doing. During the war the actual alteration of the scheme was to remain in abeyance, but the Executive Committee came in 1915 to a provisional agreement with the Companies as to certain amendments, which the Annual General Meeting of that year considered inadequate and refused to sanction. Meanwhile, in view of the rising cost of living, successive war bonuses, uniform throughout the Kingdom for all grades of the traffic staff, were obtained from the President of the Board of Trade—the cost, in effect, falling on the Government under its arrangement for guaranteeing to the shareholders the net revenue of 1913—amounting altogether to 33s. per week for men, 16s. 6d. per week for women and boys, and 8s. 3d. per week for girls, thus more than doubling the average pre-war wages. The Government, moreover, promised sympathetic consideration of the men’s demand for an Eight Hours’ Day immediately on the termination of the war.
When the Armistice in November 1918 brought hostilities to an end, negotiations were at once begun for a settlement of the outstanding questions. The National Union of Railwaymen, in more friendly conjunction with the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, whilst gaining advances fully equivalent to the increase in the cost of living, had secured in principle not only recognition, but also the valuable right of entering into negotiation with the united management of all the railways, instead of always being referred to the several companies; and even more important, it had obtained, in the uniform war bonuses, the basis of national rates of wages for the several grades, instead of rates and classes of workers varying from company to company. It was now to secure, without an effort, the Eight Hours’ Day, to come into operation on February 1, 1919, which the Government, not even consulting the Railway Companies, singly or collectively, in December 1918, conceded in principle without reduction of wages, whilst the necessary reclassification of workers and adjustment of times and wages on a national system became the subject of prolonged and difficult negotiations between the Railway Executive Committee and the two principal Unions.
The negotiations for “standardisation” which necessarily involved the amalgamation of the uniform war bonus with the varying basic rate, were dragged out by the Government from February to the end of August, to the growing irritation of the railwaymen. What occurred, as Ministers subsequently confessed, or rather boasted, was that, beginning actually in February, the Government made extensive secret preparations to break the strike which it was foreseen would occur when the Government’s decisions were made known. The railwaymen themselves confidently expected, seeing that the cost of living had not fallen, but was officially certified, in September 1919, at 115 per cent above that of July 1914, that their rates would be “standardised upwards,” so as both to adopt the scales of the best companies for all the staff, and to include the whole of the war bonus. But this automatic inclusion of the war bonus in the Standard Rate, which some trades had already secured, was exactly what the leading industrial employers were, for their own trades, anxious to prevent. They counted, indeed, on bringing about throughout British industry, during 1919 or 1920, irrespective of any change in the cost of living, a general reduction of the “swollen” wages of war-time; and there was a prevalent feeling among them, which is known to have been shared by some, at least, of the Ministers, and quite frankly expressed, that a big “fight with the Trade Unions” was inevitable, and that it would be “better to get it over” before industry had generally restarted under peace conditions. How far Sir Auckland Geddes, who as President of the Board of Trade was responsible for the negotiations, and his brother, Sir Eric Geddes, who as Minister of Transport took over the work, shared this view, and allowed it to inspire their official action, has not been revealed. The historian can only note that the Government proceedings appear consistent with this hypothesis. The Government deliberately separated from the mass of railwaymen the locomotive drivers and firemen, whose services were regarded as specially indispensable, and whose allegiance was divided between the two rival Unions. In August acceptable terms were proposed for these two classes, which conceded not only the absorption of the whole war bonus in the new scale of wages, but also certain further increases of pay, coming near to the Union’s full claims. Such a concession, it was subsequently noted, was admirably calculated, in the event of a strike, to detach the drivers and firemen from their fellow-members; to divide the two Unions, and to arouse expectations in the other grades which would make it practically certain that they would indignantly refuse the offer that was to be made in a few weeks. When the “definite” decision of the Government was sent to the Union, in a letter in which Sir Auckland Geddes with his own hand altered the word to “definitive,” as if in order to ensure an explosion, it was found that by the new scale, beginning on January 1, 1920, every grade was to suffer a reduction of existing earnings, varying from only a shilling or two per week in some cases up to as much as sixteen shillings per week—the new standard rate of the porter, for instance, being fixed at 40s., as compared with the 51s. or 53s. that he was actually receiving, or with the 60s. per week for which the Union had asked. No explanation was given by the brothers Geddes that what was intended was that there should be on January 1, 1920, no reduction whatever in the men’s earnings, and that the Government’s policy was (as subsequently stated by Mr. Lloyd George, but only on the very morning of the strike, which was the first revelation of it) that there should never be any reduction at all unless the cost of living fell for over three months below 110 per cent in excess of pre-war prices, and that (as was announced only in the Government advertisements on the eighth day of the strike) the future “sliding scale,” which had never been definitely formulated, would be allowed to work upwards as well as downwards. Unless the intention of the “definitive” offer was then and there to provoke an indignant strike, why was no hint of this “policy for 1920” included; why was it left to be only incidentally revealed, in such a way as not to be easily understood, in the final personal discussion with the Prime Minister; and, seeing that the Minister of Food himself had publicly announced that what was probable, from January 1920, was not a fall but a further rise in the cost of living, why was the alarming suggestion of a reduction to 40s. per week ever made at all? It is almost impossible to avoid the inference that the Government, which certainly decided the date and the issues, decided also the strike itself, with a view to “beating the Union,” in order to get a free hand for railway reorganisation without the necessity of consulting the operatives; in order, probably, to fit in with the general capitalist project of a scaling down of the “swollen” war-wages; and, as some say, in order to supply Mr. Lloyd George with a useful “election stunt,” with which, in the eyes of the middle class, irretrievably to damage the Labour Party.
Whether intentionally on the part of the Ministers, or by reason of an amazing maladroitness in their negotiations, what had been foreseen and expected by the Government, and for six months secretly prepared for, actually came to pass. On Wednesday, September 24, the Executive Council of the National Union of Railwaymen issued orders for a national strike to begin at midnight on Friday, September 26, unless countermanded by telegraph. So little had the Union intended or contemplated such action that absolutely no notice of the crisis had been given to the Miners’ Federation or the Transport Workers’ Federation, who were the railwaymen’s colleagues in the Triple Alliance; and the Union had only some £3000 available in cash. Efforts were made by the men to avert the stoppage, which it was recognised would be a national calamity. The Executive Council sought and obtained long interviews with the Prime Minister himself on Thursday, and even on the Friday morning; and the verbatim reports of these discussions reveal (a) that the Government showed no inclination to meet the men’s case—Sir Eric Geddes peremptorily intervening at one point even to prevent a criticism of the “definitive” new scale being adduced; (b) that the Government did not even then set forth what subsequently turned out to have been the proposal that the Ministry of Transport had really intended to make (unless, indeed, we are to assume that the “definitive” offer was silently changed in the course of the strike). Again, it can only be inferred that Mr. Lloyd George either did not wish to prevent the strike or else was quite exceptionally below his usual level of lucidity in explanation of any scheme that he wished to have accepted. What the Prime Minister did was immediately to denounce to the public the National Union of Railwaymen as engaged in an anarchist conspiracy!
The nine days’ stoppage that ensued was, in many respects, the most remarkable industrial conflict that we have yet seen. Half a million railwaymen left their work at midnight on the 26th of September, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen at once joining loyally with the N.U.R., and very nearly every member of either Union coming out. The men on the Irish railways were directed to remain at work. Never before had there been so nearly a complete stoppage of the railway service from one end of Great Britain to the other. It is to be noted that the third Union, the Railway Clerks’ Association (which had come to include the Clerical, Administrative, and Supervisory Staffs), directed its members to remain absolutely neutral, and not to do any of the strikers’ work. The various Unions of Post Office employees sought and obtained an official decision that they were not to be called upon to do any service hitherto done by men on strike. The Government, which sent soldiers to guard some of the railway stations,[627] hastened to announce publicly—in significant contrast with its decision of 1912—that in no case would the troops be employed to run trains. For the first time the Government found itself liable to pay unemployment benefit to all other workers who were stopped as a result of the strike; and for the enormous extension of the State Unemployment Benefit that was expected to be required, arrangements were promulgated under which the Benefit would be issued by each employer to his own wage-earners, when these were thrown idle by the strike; and that whilst such persons might be called upon to take temporary employment in handling food supplies, they would not be required to accept service on the railways themselves.
There was, in spite of wild newspaper exaggerations, practically no disorder and no attempt to injure property. Except in a very few cases, in which local mishandling of the situation by the authorities led to resentment and misunderstanding, the Executive Council’s order that the horses were not to be allowed to suffer was cordially acted on by the men. The Government was allowed, without attempt at obstruction, to bring at once into operation the elaborate arrangements it had long been preparing, for ensuring the regular supply of London and other large towns with milk and other foodstuffs by means of an extensive motor-lorry service. Volunteers for railway work were called for, and with the aid of the small remnant of non-unionists a tiny trickle of trains was set going, which provided for the local passenger service in London and some other cities; and gradually accomplished one or two long-distance trains per day, which carried the mails and were crowded with venturous passengers. What stopped almost completely was the mineral and heavy goods traffic, and by the end of the week so many industries had come to the end of their fuel, and so many coalpits were short of waggons and of room at the pithead, that, whilst nearly 400,000 workmen in collieries and factories were already idle, the next week would have seen literally millions unemployed. Meanwhile, in spite of press reports to the contrary, the Union Executives knew that, whilst a few men returned to work, each day more joined the strikers, so that there were actually a greater number signing the book at the end than at the beginning of the struggle. But the National Union of Railwaymen found considerable difficulty in realising from its investments, and in making locally available at a couple of thousand centres, sufficient cash to pay immediately the half a million pounds of strike pay that was required; and only the prompt and cordial assistance of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s printing department, which got out the necessary supply of cheques in marvellously quick time, and of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Bank, which made the N.U.R. cheques payable at the several Co-operative Societies themselves, averted a breakdown. Food was in some cases refused to the strikers by shopkeepers; and it may be that it was only the prompt assistance of the Co-operative Societies, which agreed to honour vouchers issued by the local strike committees, that prevented the Government from putting in operation a project of starving out the railwaymen’s families by withdrawing their ration cards or withholding the food supplies under Government control. One blow below the belt the Government did strike in arbitrarily commanding the withholding from the strikers of a whole week’s pay which they had earned by their service prior to the stoppage, and which it was the custom of the companies always to keep in hand for a week by way of security against theft or embezzlement. This had never been done in any previous railway strike. Whether or not the railwaymen had broken any legal contract of service by giving only three days’ notice of their strike, is not clear—the point appears never to have been raised or decided,—but in any case the companies had only a right to sue each man for any damages that might be shown to be caused by such a breach of contract; and the Government had plainly no legal warrant for becoming the judge in its own cause, and itself arbitrarily assessing the damages due from each man at precisely one week’s earnings. This action, coupled with the evasive and ever-changing terms of the Government’s wage proposals, and the campaign of abuse that the Government organised throughout the press—personally directed by Sir William Sutherland, one of the Prime Minister’s secretaries—had a great influence in rallying the Trade Union world in support of the railwaymen.
The “publicity campaign,” by which, for the first time in an industrial struggle, a persistent organised appeal was made by both sides to public opinion, was, indeed, the most remarkable feature of the struggle. At the outset the Government, in spite of the outspoken advocacy of the Daily Herald, had it all its own way. The public, seriously inconvenienced by the stoppage, was told by nearly every newspaper in the Kingdom—daily supplied by a Government office with a lengthy bulletin of “Strike News”—that the strike was the result of an “anarchist” conspiracy among the railwaymen; that the Union had wantonly broken off negotiations without cause because it positively wished to “hold up” the whole community; that the Government had not really intended any reduction of wages at all, and that the figure of 40s. had reference only to the contingency of the cost of living reverting to what it was before the war; that, in fact, the Government were positively doubling the railwaymen’s wages, and that the men, realising this, and discovering how they had been deceived by their Executive Council, were resuming their duties at all points. To counteract this Government propaganda, the Daily Herald made the most enterprising arrangements for getting its issue distributed all over England, and more than doubled its circulation, whilst the National Union of Railwaymen employed its own Publicity Department, utilising for this purpose the Labour Research Department.[628] A number of competent writers, cartoonists, and statisticians belonging to the Labour Party placed their services in this way at the Research Department’s disposal, so that the Executive Council was able, within a couple of days, to pour forth a stream of articles, letters, speeches, and cartoons, for which the newspapers generally accorded space.[629] Every move of the Government, and every statement that it issued, was immediately countered by an appropriate answer. When Mr. Lloyd George supplied a message denouncing the strikers which appeared on the film in every cinema, Mr. J. H. Thomas was himself filmed in the act of delivering a cogent reply. But the Union’s Publicity Department found the space given by the newspapers inadequate, and started placing full-page advertisements in the Times and other newspapers, in which the Government’s equivocations and evasions as to the wages offered were effectively exposed. The Government followed suit, and presently the two advertisements appeared on successive pages, with the unforeseen result that the Government’s statement of its proposals to the men was detected in changing from day to day as the strike continued, growing progressively more favourable to the men, but professing still to be the “definitive” decision of Sir Auckland Geddes which had provoked the strike. The outcome of a week’s skilfully organised “publicity” was a steady shifting of public opinion, and even a distinct change in the newspaper editorials. By the end of the week the men’s case was winning.