Such amalgamation is greatly obstructed by legal requirements. Down to 1917 the law demanded that each society desiring to unite should ratify the decision by a two-thirds majority not merely of those voting, but of the entire membership. Such a poll is almost impossible of attainment by Trade Unions, whose members cannot usually be individually communicated with, owing not only to their frequent changes of residence and the absence of many of them abroad, but also to the lack, in most cases, of any complete register of addresses. In 1917 the Government at last permitted the passage of an Amending Act for which Trade Unionists had often pressed; but even then insisted on any amalgamation being carried, at a 50 per cent poll of the whole membership, by at least 20 per cent majority, conditions which make amalgamation everywhere difficult, and in some Unions (such as those of seamen) quite impossible. In several cases Unions in which the general opinion has been in favour of amalgamation have failed to get the necessary vote. We have already described the ingenious device by which the British Steel Smelters’ Society and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation surmounted this difficulty.
Meanwhile, of federations as distinct from amalgamations the Trade Union world has a variety more bewildering than ever, some of which have already been referred to. We have to note that the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation, the establishment of which in 1889 we described in Industrial Democracy, has continued in existence, doing useful work from time to time in connection with demarcation disputes and other subjects of inter-union controversy, especially on the North-East Coast, notably contributing also in 1905 to the successful claim of the Clyde trades to weekly instead of fortnightly pays, which the employers had stubbornly resisted for a whole decade, but continuing to be weakened by the abstention, except for a few years, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which, however, now frequently consents to act in conjunction with it in general trade questions.
What is significant is the change in type and purpose of these multifarious industrial federations, which have now come to form an important element in the Trade Union world.[632] Federation, in fact, has undergone a subtle change of character. Instead of loose alliances for mutual support in disputes, or for the adjustment of mutual differences as to “demarcation” and transfer of members, the federations of all the craft or sectional Unions engaged in particular industries—notably those of the Building Trades, the Transport Workers, and, though not yet to the same extent, the Printing Trades and the Woollen Workers, like the older organisation of the Cotton Operatives—have become increasingly, themselves negotiating bodies, recognised by the equally organised employers, and concerting with these what are, in effect, national regulations governing their industries throughout the whole kingdom. The later development of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation has been in the same direction. In the case of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain the development has gone still further; and this great organisation, whilst retaining the federal form, and, even now, not completely admitted to “recognition” by the Mining Association of Great Britain, unquestioningly acts for the whole industry in national issues, as if it were an “amalgamated” Union. Whether or not we are to see all the rival and sectional Unions in each industry amalgamating into a single “Industrial Union,” as many Trade Unionists desire, it must be recognised that the development, during the past decade, of active negotiating federations for the several industries goes far to supply the most urgent need. In short, although financially distinct Trade Unions remain, on the whole, as numerous as ever, the number of separate negotiating bodies, so far as concerns matters relating to an industry as a whole, becomes steadily smaller.
We pass now to federal bodies of a different character.
The General Federation of Trade Unions
In 1899, arising out of the losses caused by the costly engineering dispute of 1897-98, the Trades Union Congress established a General Federation of Trade Unions, largely at the instance of Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers, designed exclusively as a mutual reinsurance agency against the heavy financial burden to which, in the form of Strike Pay, or Dispute or Contingent Benefit, labour disputes subject every active trade society.[633] By means of a small contribution from a large aggregate membership (1s. or 2s. per year per member), the General Federation is able to recoup to its constituent societies 2s. 6d. or 5s. per week per member affected towards their several expenditures upon disputes. Beginning with 44 societies, having a total membership of 343,000, it steadily increased the number of its adherents until, in 1913, it had affiliated as many as 150 societies, having at that date 884,291 members. Since that time the number of societies has dropped to 141 in 1919; but their increase in membership had raised the aggregate affiliation to 1,215,107, the largest ever recorded. The General Federation, whilst suffering for the past seven years from an arrest of growth, has to its credit twenty years’ success in surmounting the difficulties which have destroyed every previous attempt of the kind, and its prudent management is shown by the fact that it was able, from its normal revenue, to discharge all its obligations down to 1905, and to accumulate a reserve of £119,656. In that year the members rashly insisted on a reduction of the contribution by one-third, not foreseeing the outburst of disputes in 1908-9, which caused the Federation to pay out for 638 disputes no less than £122,778, and necessitated in 1913 the doubling of the contribution. Since that date, in spite of payments to societies averaging £1500 every week of the year, the Federation has not only met its engagements, but also built up a reserve exceeding a quarter of a million sterling. In 1911 it formed an Approved Society under the National Insurance Act, with the object of relieving the separate Trade Unions, and notably the thousand small ones, from the onerous task of separately administering the Act, and to ensure that their members did not go off to the Industrial Insurance Companies, an effort which has failed to attract more than a few thousand members. An extension of the effort to the provision of death benefits, by the formation of a Friendly Society section in 1913, has proved scarcely more successful.
It must be recognised that during the past six or seven years the Federation has lost favour with important sections of the Trade Union world. It was probably inevitable that its inclusion of small sectional societies should eventually bring it into conflict with the larger Unions by whom such societies are often regarded as illegitimate competitors. Grounds of this kind may be assigned for the secession of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Amalgamated Society of Tailors in 1915; and for the powerful hostility shown since 1913 by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. But this feeling has been accentuated by a growing resentment of the part played by the General Federation—not unconnected with the forceful personality of the General Secretary—first in international relations, and secondly in the representation of Trade Union opinion to the Government and to the public.
The General Federation, from its very establishment, affiliated itself to the International Trade Union Federation, which aimed at the collection and publication of statistics of Trade Unionism all over the world by an International Trade Union Secretariat, and at the mutual interchange of Trade Union information. For the first fifteen years of its existence this action of the General Federation was not objected to, although the fact that it represented only 25 to 30 per cent of British Trade Unionism impaired the value of its statistical contributions. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, which might well have undertaken the task, long ignored its international interests; but during the Great War increasingly resented the appearance of the General Federation as the representative of British Trade Unionism, and especially the almost continuous negotiations between its secretary, Mr. Appleton, and Mr. Gompers, the Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and with M. Jouhaux, the Secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail of France, along lines not consistent with those of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. When, in 1918, attempts were made to reconstitute the International Federation of Trade Unions, the Parliamentary Committee claimed at first to be itself the representative of Great Britain; but presently compromised on a joint and equal representation by the two bodies.
But more serious than the question of international representation was the resentment at the ever-widening range of subjects at home on which Mr. Appleton, the Management Committee, and the Conferences of the General Federation claimed to voice the feelings of Organised Labour. It was urged that the Federation was formed exclusively for the purpose of mutually reinsuring Strike Benefit, and that it had accordingly no mandate, and did nothing but weaken the Trade Union forces, both in the narrow field of the conditions of the wage contract, and on the broader issues of Labour’s political aspirations, whenever it entered into rivalry with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress on the one hand, or with the Labour Party on the other. It looks as if the General Federation must in future either restrict itself to the limited range of its original purpose, or else run the risk of being financially weakened by the secession of influential Trade Unions, which will not permanently remain affiliated to all three national bodies, when finding these speaking on the same subjects with different voices.